MONTGOMERY, Ala. – With two regular season games remaining, the Alabama State University women's basketball team has locked up a home game for the first round of the SWAC Championship Basketball Tournament; however, they still have an outside chance of claiming the regular season title.
Alabama State (12-14, 11-5 SWAC) and Grambling State (15-12, 13-3 SWAC) meet Thursday night at the Fredrick C. Hobdy Center at 5:30 pm, as they chase the Lady Tigers for the overall title.
"We just have to take care of ourselves and what we do," Alabama State head coach
Freda Freeman-Jackson. "We just have to go into Grambling and play our game, and let things play out. We really needed a win by Mississippi Valley State Monday night, but now we know what we have to do and it starts with us going in to Grambling on Thursday."
The Lady Hornets can do worse than the fourth seed, but needs help to clinch the regular season. They can win the regular season if they win out and beats Grambling State by more than 15 points to win the point differential tie-breaker, and Texas Southern loses to Alcorn State but defeats Southern – who must lose to Prairie View A&M – and Grambling State loses out. The top four seeds are determined as Grambling State, Texas Southern, Southern and Alabama State are assured a first-round home game.
The two teams have met once this season, with the Lady Tigers claiming a 60-45 victory back on January 2 prior to Alabama State reeling off six consecutive victories. In the loss,
Britney Wright and
Daniele Ewert each scored nine points for the Lady Hornets as they were held to just 32.7 (18-of-55) percent from the floor and 15.4 (2-of-13) percent from beyond the arc.
Wright leads the Lady Hornets, and the conference, in scoring at 18.0 points per game after matching her career-high of 35 against Prairie View A&M in their last game. In conference play, Wright – the second leading scorer in school history – is averaging 21.5 points and 8.1 rebounds per game; while scoring in double figures in the last 15 games for the Lady Hornets.
Meanwhile, Ewert enters the contest as the second-leading scorer on this year's team at 9.5 points per game and is second in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) in free throw percentage.
Alabama State must find a way to stop the scoring punch of Shakyla Hill, Jazmin Boyd and Monisha Neal who have combined to average 38 points this season – over half of the scoring for the Lady Tigers. Hill leads the way for Grambling State at 14.8 points per game, while Boyd averages 12.6 and Neal 10.6; while Hill also averages eight rebounds per game for the season.
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