Game Notes
GRAMBLING, La.—The Alabama State University men's basketball team has arrived in Grambling where they will face the Tigers Saturday, March 2 in a regular season-ending match up scheduled to begin at 5 p.m.
The Hornets will be out to break a three-game losing streak and will also be looking to gain some confidence as they head into the Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament beginning March 12 in Garland, Texas.
ASU (9-21/7-10 SWAC) is coming off a 70-65 overtime loss at Jackson State. It was a game in which the Hornets held a 15 point lead with nine minutes left in the game only to see JSU come back to send the game into overtime, where they eventually pulled out the win.
“We have got to put the JSU game behind us and come out ready to play tomorrow night,” Head Coach
Lewis Jackson said. “It will be senior night and they will come out with a lot of emotion and play hard. We need to get going tomorrow night and get into a rhythm that we can carry over into the conference tournament.”
Grambling (0-26/0-17 SWAC) has struggled all season and have been in several close games, but they have yet to pull out a win this season.
Tery Rose is the only Tiger averaging in double digits at 13.6 points per game. He is one of the top three point shooters in the conference hitting .397 of his three point attempts. David Copeland leads the team in assists with 71 and Peter Roberson is sixth in the conference in blocked shots averaged 1.2 per contest.
The Hornets continue to be led by Joshua Freeman who has his average up to 13.8 points per game after his 15 point performance against Jackson State. He has moved up to eighth in the SWAC in scoring average.
Phillip Crawford is averaging 12.1 points per game and is now 14
th in the conference in scoring. He is leading the team in rebounding (5.9) standing eighth in the conference.
ASU is looking to get another solid outing from
Shawntez Patterson who had 13 points at Jackson State. He was four of nine from the field and hit all three of his three point attempts.
Grambling will be the seventh seed in the tournament and ASU has a chance to be the fourth or fifth seed heading into the tournament, but must take care of business tomorrow night.
“All of the teams are fighting for their seeding and there are several teams ahead of us,” Jackson said. “We are at the point now where we can't worry about those teams in front of us because we have to worry about winning this game. We are not doing the things we need to do to win games and we have to concentrate on us and not on everyone else tomorrow night.”
