Alabama State University basketball team will face the Bears of Mercer University on Sunday, December 16 at 1 p.m. CST at the Hawkins Arena in Macon, Ga.
 
This is the first game for the Bears since Dec. 7, when they picked up 48-44 win over Georgia Southern.  Mercer enters the contest 5-3 overall.  The Lady Hornets are coming off of a 57-46 loss to Nicholls State on Thursday night.  ASU will bring a 1-5 record to the game.  This will be the eighth match-up between the two teams.  Mercer leads the series 5-2.  The last time that ASU played Mercer was in 1999 during the Auburn Thanksgiving Tournament where the Bears defeated the Lady Hornets 58-39.
 
Junior Nakiya Smith leads the Lady Hornets after 6 games averaging 13 points per game.  After playing in two games Quentori Alford has returned to the floor leading on the boards averaging 11 rebounds per contest.  As a team the Lady Hornets are averaging 57 points per game and they are shooting 62 percent from the free strip.
 
Mercer is led by Precious Bridges averaging 17 points per game.  Shermesia Smith owns the boards for the Bears averaging 6.8 rebounds per contest.  As a team the Bears are scoring 56 points and 40.9 rebounds per game.
 
“Mercer is a typical team like Troy, UAB or Samford,” said head coach Freda Freeman-Jackson.  “This is a team that we are going to have to make sure that we play smart.  The thing that I am most concerned with is our defensive effort, our understanding the principal of defense.  Coming into this year I would have never thought that we would be so concerned with being able to play great defense, because we have so many young ladies returning from last year's team.  I really feel that once we get the defensive aspects down, where it needs to be then we should do a better job running our offense.
 
“Offensively we need to tweak some things because I feel like we have been trying to do too much with the personnel that we have and we need to simplify things to make sure that we put our girls in a situation where they can be more successful.  I am thinking that the adjustments that we have made, it should create an opportunity to win more games.”
 
Fans can view play-by play action via live stats at www.livestats.prestosports.com/mercer/ by clicking onto the live stats link or going to Lady Hornets Basketball game day central story page.