The Hornets are back home for the first time since Feb. 3 after playing their past three games on the road and coming home with a 1-2 record on the road trip.
 
"We did not play very well at all in any of the three games on the road," Head Coach Lewis Jackson said.  "It is good to be back home and I am hoping the home environment will help us as we look to correct our mistakes.  It is always good to play in front of your home crowd."
 
The Hornets (14-9/8-4 SWAC) enter the game with a slim hold on second place in the race for the conference regular season title.  Alcorn State (10-15/7-6 SWAC) has won back-to-back games has moved into a tie for fourth place only a half game behind third place Alabama A&M.
 
ASU will be looking to end a current string of games where they have shot the ball well in one half and have not shot the ball well in the other half.  On the recent two-game losing streak, the Hornets only shot 31 percent in the first half at Pine Bluff, but came back to shoot 61 percent in the second.  At Alabama A&M ASU shot a respectable 48 percent in the opening half, but only 29 in the second.
 
"We are not very good on offense right now," Jackson said.  "We have to get back to doing what we were doing earlier when we won seven games in the first half of the conference season.  We were not turning the ball over and running our offense and sometimes that included going to the second and third option."
 
"Right now we have too many guys doing their own thing and not getting into the offense.  We are not taking care of the ball and we are taking bad shots.  If we run our offense we can get open shots; we can play our inside-out game, but not the way we are playing right now."
 
The points may be hard to come by in this game, just like it was the first time they met as ASU won 58-54 in Lorman back on Jan. 25.  The 58 points is the second least amount of points the Hornets have scored this season.  Alcorn is second in the SWAC in scoring defense only allowing 67.3 points per game and the Hornets are third at 67.6 points per game.
 
Alcorn is ninth in the SWAC in scoring averaging 63.9 points per game, but has two of the top scorers in the league.  LeAntwan Luckett is the SWAC's second leading scorer averaging 15.4 points per game.  Octavius Brown's 12.5 points per game scoring is 13^th.
 
Those two players lead most of the team statistics for the Braves as Brown is the team's leading rebounder (6.8), three point field goals made leader (25), three point percentage (.391) and blocked shots (20).  Luckett has a team-high 56 assists and 34 steals.
 
"Alcorn is playing as well as they have all season right now," Jackson said.  "They have a couple of guys that are two of the best players in the conference.  We have got to play better defense by getting in the passing lanes, keeping their guards out of the lane and pressuring the ball.  Those are things we have worked and worked on and we are not doing a very good job with that right now."
 
Jamel Waters has been a steady scorer for ASU all season and has hit double figures in all but six games.  His 14.2 points per game average leads the team while he continues to lead the team and the SWAC in assists averaging six per game.
 
The Hornets need for DeMarcus Robinson to become more of a consistent scorer.  He is averaging 11.9 points per game, but is in a string of games where he has only reached double-digits twice over the past eight games and is only averaging 8.4 points per game during those games.
 
Maurice Strong has managed to pick up the scoring a bit hitting double-digits in four consecutive games and five of the past six.  He had only reached double figures three times in the first 17 games.  He has his average up to 8.6 points per game and continues to lead ASU in rebounding averaging 6.7 per game.
 
The game can be heard on WVAS FM 90.7 and can be seen live on HornetVision at bamastatesports.com.