Ladyjack Game Notes: vs UTPA
11/30/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Nov. 30, 2010
UTPA Game Notes
Stephen F. Austin vs UTPA
Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010 • 7:00 p.m. (CST)
William R. Johnson Coliseum (7,203) • Nacogdoches, Texas
Radio: KTBQ 107.7 FM • TV: None • Online: www.sfajacks.com
Ladyjacks
Record: 0-5
Last 5/Streak: 0-5/L5
Coach: Brandon Schneider
Career: 306-77 (13th season)
At SFA: 0-5 (1st season)
SID: Ben Rikard
E-Mail: rikardbenja@sfasu.edu
Web: www.sfajacks.com
Broncs
Record: 4-3
Last 5/Streak: 2-3/L3
Coach: Denny Downing
Career: 123-119 (9th season)
At UTPA: 17-22 (2nd season)
SID: Rebecca Sweat
E-Mail: sweatra@utpa.edu
Web: www.utpabroncs.com
FOR STARTERS
After a tough month of November, SFA will turn the calendar to December this week with a home game against UT-Pan American. The Ladyjacks have lost each of their first five games to open the season after dropping contests to Loyola-Marymount and Denver last week at the Loyola-Marymount Thanksgiving Classic held in Los Angeles, Calif.
LAST TIME OUT
SFA got a career-high 19 points on Friday from senior Toni Davis, but Denver shot nearly 62 percent and blew past the Ladjacks for an 88-76 win in the finale of the LMU Tournament.
THE BRONCS
UTPA got off to a fast start this season, winning each of their first four games - including a home win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi - before going on the road and dropping three consecutive decisions at the BTI Invitational, hosted by Oklahoma.
vs UTPA
It has been more than a decade since these two programs met on the hardwood, and in the series history it has been all Ladyjacks. SFA has won each of the six previous contests by an average of 48 points and eclipsed the 100-point mark in each of the last three meetings; however, the last time they met was all the way back in 1998.
COVERAGE
Wednesday’s game will mark the debut of Ladyjack basketball on the air waves as James Dixon will have the courtside call on KTBQ 107.7 FM, with the pregame show starting 15 minutes before tip. Live video will be available for both games at www.sfajacks.com, as will Gametracker.
UP NEXT
After a brief stay at home, SFA is back on the road for four in a row beginning Saturday at Texas Southern. That will be followed by arguably SFA’s most difficult road test when the Ladyjacks travel to Norman, Okla., to take on the nationally-ranked Oklahoma Sooners.
SCHNEIDER’S DEBUT SEASON: This season is marking the beginning of a new era in Ladjack basketball as Brandon Schneider is in his debut as SFA’s head coach. Schneider is the eighth head coach in SFA history and comes to Nacogdoches on the heels of a 12-year career and a national title last season at Emporia State University in Kansas. SFA’s loss in his opening game is not an unusual occurence for new Ladyjack coaches as SFA’s previous coaches are now just 2-6 all-time in their debut game.; however, with over 300 career wins to his credit, Schneider is looking to continue a trend of overall early success by SFA coaches as each of the last three SFA skippers have won no less than 22 games in their debut year.
DISTANCE LEARNING: Junior guard Tammara Marion caught fire from three-point land against Tulane, burying six of her eight three-point tries and finishing with 24 points on the night, her third double-figure outing of the year in three games. Those six triples were just one shy of the SFA school record for single-game threes, a record she tied last year with seven against Central Arkansas, a game in which her last three came in game-winning fashion at the buzzer.
ROAD WARRIORS: The Ladyjacks are getting their fair share of drive time during the non-conference season with eight of the first 10 games of the season will all be played away from Johnson Coliseum. They will get a slight change with three home non-conference games in January before league play starts, but being on the road is nothing new to this group after playing just three home games before SLC play last year as well. In all, this year’s senior class has played 40 non-conference games in their careers, with 29 of those being away from home.
A FRESH START: SFA decided to make a change in the starting five over the Thanksgiving Break, and statistically it made a difference. Senior Chantol Drennan made her first two starts of the season in California and responded with a season best 17 points against Loyola-Marymount, and had seven points and seven rebounds in just fourteen minutes against Denver. After sitting out the first game of the season, Drennan has averaged 9.5 points and 4.8 rebounds in just 15 minutes of work per game in the last four games and now is tops in the SLC, hitting 59.1 percent of her shots from the floor.
TAKE ALL THE FREEBIES YOU CAN GET: The last two seasons SFA has been a solid team from the charity stripe, and this year it seems to be an effective scoring tool for it again. The Ladjacks have hit 70 percent of their free shots this season, which is second in the SLC. In their two games at the LMU Invitational, the Ladyjacks were 36 of 44 from the stripe, a 75-percent clip.
HAVE A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIEND: Point guard Ebony Alexander has not seen the court time that she has in recent years, but lately the Ladyjacks are getting much more bang for their buck when she is on the floor. The senior is currently leading the SLC in assists with six per contest, dishing out no less than five dimes in any of SFA’s five games to date. What was more impressive in two games at the Loyola-Marymount was her control, dishing out 13 assists while turning the ball over just three times after totaling no less than four turnovers in each of her first three games. Last season she finished 10th all-time at SFA with 5.6 assists per game, and if she is able to average at least six per game this season she would be the first Ladyack to do so since Stacy Brown in 1989-90.
DAVIS NAMED ALL-TOURNAMENT: Toni Davis was named to the all-tournament team at the LMU Invitational over the Thanksgiving break, and deservedly so. The senior came off the bench for the first two times this season and after scoring nine points against Loyola-Marymount, pumped in a career best 19 points against Denver.
GOODNER NOTE: Already through just five games of her senior campaign, Decreasha Goodner is showing signs of being a legitimate scoring threat this season from the outside for the Ladyjacks. Goodner had only knocked down 21 three-point buckets through three seasons in her career entering this year, with a season-high of 11 last year; however, this season she has already knocked down nine triples in 25 tries (36 percent) She had five threes in two games over the Thanksgiving break, and tied a career high with three against Denver
RECORD WATCHES: Last season sophomore Tammara Marion became the seventh Ladyjack to record 100 career three-pointers for her career, and after knocking down five triples in two games at the LMU Invitational she currently sits at 116 for her career. If she hits her career average again this year for three-pointers in a season she will move into the program’s all-time top five with a year of eligibility remaining. Ebony Alexander is also inching her way toward one of SFA’s top-10s as her 13 assists in California give her 351 for her career, just 18 shy of Lashinda Winters’ who holds the No. 10 spot all-time in SFA history with 369.
PRESEASON POLLS: With just one starter lost from last season’s SLC co-champions that went 13-3 in the league, one would assume that the Ladyjacks would be receiving plenty of respect around the league entering this year. The Ladyjacks did make the transition this year back into the SLC West Division and still managed to garner three first-place votes in the coaches poll and two more in the SID poll, but were still only selected to finish third in the division behind UTSA and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
800-WIN CLUB: The Ladyjacks became the sixth member of an exclusive club with their 73-40 victory over Sam Houston State in 2007-08. SFA became only the sixth women’s program in NCAA Division I history to record 800 wins. The Ladyjacks joined Tennessee, Louisiana Tech, Old Dominion, Texas and James Madison as the only schools to ever accomplish the feat. Making the victory more special was the fact that it was Sue Gunter Day on the SFA campus. Tennessee Tech also joined the 800-win club in 2008-09.
