By: Jacob Pumphrey
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SOUTHERN ARKANSAS
LADY MULERIDERS
0-7
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DELTA STATE
LADY STATESMEN
2-5
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LEMOYNE-OWEN
LADY MAGICIANS
2-6
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Friday, December 15 | 3 p.m.
Bruce Hall Gymnasium - Memphis, Tenn.
LIVE STATS | LIVE VIDEO | LIVE AUDIO
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GAME NOTES (PDF)
LADY MULERIDER NEWS AND NOTES
With the academic semester finished, the Southern Arkansas Lady Mulerider Basketball team will play twice this week before the Christmas holiday beginning with an 11 a.m. tip-off against former Gulf South Conference foe Delta State on Wednesday, December 13. SAU follows that in-region tilt by hitting the road to Memphis for a 3 p.m. contest with LeMoyne-Owen College on Friday, December 15.
Southern Arkansas is still in search of its first win of the season and with three games remaining in the calendar year, the Lady Muleriders are hoping to gain some momentum heading into 2018 and heavy league action.
The Lady Muleriders (0-7) have dropped seven straight games to start the season, but have found themselves in the thick of a decision late in several ballgames. SAU suffered a pair of losses at the hands of Lindenwood and Lincoln at the GAC/MIAA Crossover Challenge during the season's opening weekend. In four of their past six games, Southern Arkansas has held a second-half lead, including two games with leads in the fourth quarter. The Lady Muleriders have also suffered three losses by single digits during the first half of the season.
SAU currently averages 63.3 points per game on a 38.7% shooting clip and allows 78.0 points per game to opponents who are shooting 40.1% this season from the floor. The Lady Muleriders have struggled around the arc shooting just 19.7% from deep, while allowing opponents to make almost 40% of their trifecta attempts.
Southern Arkansas owns the league's fourth-highest free throw shooting percentage at 74.8%. Through seven games, SAU is averaging 35.0 rebounds, 3.1 blocked shots, 10.6 assists, and 8.4 steals per game.
Kimberly Crown leads the team in scoring averaging 12.3 points per game and Olivia McWilliams follows with 10.7 points per game. Both of those scoring marks rank in the top 25 of the league. Crown also ranks in the top ten in rebounding at 6.8 per game and her .477 success rate from the field ranks ninth. McWilliams owns the team's top shooting clip as she has been successful on almost half of her shots this season; boasting the fifth-best mark in the conference at 49.1%.
Crown and Sue Key have produced top 15 marks in free throw shooting as each have made good on 76.2% of the shots from the charity stripe.
Three players are currently averaging 1.5 steals or more per game led by Anna Djedjemel's 1.9. McWilliams follows with 1.8 and Ramiah Henry averages 1.7. Henry, as of late, has proven to be an additional scoring threat after averaging 12.5 points per game in games against East Central and Southeastern Oklahoma.
Crown's 1.2 blocked shots per game is the fifth-highest average in the GAC and Tuana Dinc's 0.9 blocked shots per game ranks ninth.
COACH
The Lady Muleriders are coached by
Julio Pacheco, who begins his third season at Southern Arkansas. Pacheco guided the Lady Muleriders to a NCAA DII program record 19 wins and their first postseason victory in nine years in his first year on the job and after a rebuilding year in 2016-17, Pacheco has the new look Lady Muleriders poised to return to the Great American Conference Tournament.
SCOUTING DELTA STATE
The Lady Statesmen enter Wednesday morning's tip-off at 2-5 overall with a 1-1 mark in Gulf South Conference play. DSU opponents are a combined 30-19 this season including Barry and Spring Hill who each have 7-2 records and Christian Brothers who sits at 8-1.
Delta State averages just 53.4 points per game, but owns the nation's 19th-best defense which is allowing opponents to score just 55.4 ppg. Opponents are shooting just under 40% from the floor, including a 26.4% mark from deep, while DSU makes 42% of its shots. The Lady Statesmen are one of the most disciplined teams in the nation as they lead the GSC in fewest fouls with the nation's 25th-lowest mark with 121 at 17 per game.
Alondrea Rush is Delta State's top scorer at 16.6 points per game and also owns team-high marks in field goal percentage (47.2%), three-point percentage (37.8%), three-point field goals attempted (45), three-point field goals made (17), and assists per game (3.0).
Takisha Jordan follows with 12.3 points per game and Simone Jackson adds 7.9 ppg. Jordan leads the team in steals with 10 and Rush adds nine. Raven Johnson grabs a team-high 6.3 boards per game and Jackson follows with 5.1. Jordan trails Rush in assists with 15.
COACH
The legendary Craig Roden is in his fourth season as the Head Coach of the Lady Statesmen. Roden led the program to the GSC Championship in 2015-16 with a 22-7 record and a trip to the NCAA South Region Tournament. Roden owns the second-most wins for a head coach in Gulf South Conference history with 352 after making stops at West Georgia, West Alabama and Delta State.
THE SERIES
The Lady Muleriders and the Lady Statesmen meet for the 37th time on Wednesday morning inside the W.T. Watson Center. DSU holds the all-time series record at 32-4 against SAU and has won the last ten meetings. Southern Arkansas' last win over Delta State came in an upset as the Lady Muleriders defeated #8 Delta on the road in Cleveland, 52-49, on January 18, 2007. Delta State has been ranked in the top-25 12 times when meeting with SAU and it will be just the second time in the last seven matchups that the Lady Statesmen aren't ranked.
LAST TIME OUT
SAU and Delta last met on November 22, 2016 in Cleveland, Mississippi. The Lady Statesmen took a 31-28 lead into the halftime break, before Southern Arkansas cut the deficit to just a point, 49-48, heading into the final ten minutes of action. It was a low-scoring fourth quarter for both teams, but SAU managed just six points with only one bucket during the final eight minutes of play as DSU picked up a 60-54 in-region win. Kimberly Crown led all scorers with 19 points to go along with seven rebounds, while Anna Djedjemel added 11 points, five assists, and four steals in a game-high 37 minutes of action.
SCOUTING LEMOYNE-OWEN
The Lady Magicians enter Friday's non-conference affair with a 2-6 record overall and a .500 mark in four Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference games. LOC is 2-0 inside Bruce Hall Gymnasium this season owning league wins over Claflin and Benedict. LOC's last two games have been close ones as the Lady Magicians dropped a 63-61 decision on the road at Kentucky State, before suffering a 99-94 defeat in double overtime at Central State (OH.).
As a team, LeMoyne-Owen averages 70.5 points per game and is shooting just over 39% from the floor. From three-point range, the Lady Magicians own a 31.1% shooting mark, while making around 67% of their free throw opportunities. Defensively, LOC allows opponents to make almost 40% of their shots, while giving up 73.5 points per game.
Dana Gettis leads the offensive attack for LOC averaging 21.6 points per game behind a 46% success rate from the floor and is the top three-point threat shooting 34.2% from behind the arc with a team-leading 14 trifectas made. Tenesha Wright follows with 15.3 points per game and Ty Broadwater adds 7.6 ppg.
Wright is the leading rebounder grabbing eight boards per contest and Broadwater has swatted a team-high eight shots. Gettis' 18 steals are tops for LOC and her 15 assists are second to teammate Shaynn Nance's 20.
COACH
The Lady Magicians are led by head coach Antony Partee, who is in his sixth season with the program. Partee has totaled a career record of 40-74 entering this week of play. Before coming to Memphis, Partee gathered ten years of coaching experience with stops at Robert Morris University (Ill.) and the University of Illinois at Chicago both as an assistant.
LAST TIME OUT
The last time these two programs faced each other was on December 17, 2015, in Magnolia. Southern Arkansas came away with a victory; its sixth out of the first seven games of that campaign. The win also marked the highest scoring output for the Lady Muleriders in 14 years as players scored in double figures led by 25 points from senior
Rosa Bryant. The 104 points scored that afternoon are the most the program has scored since.
THE SERIES
It will be just the seventh meeting between the two programs since 2000. Southern Arkansas holds a 4-2 lead in the series and it will be just the second trip to Memphis for the Lady Muleriders in the series. The two teams have played twice in Magnolia, once in Memphis, and three times at a neutral site (Arkadelphia, Arkansas (1) and Cleveland, Mississippi (2)). The last trip to Bluff City for SAU resulted in a 59-53 loss in 2012.
