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ABILENE, Texas - Abilene Christian's women's basketball team this week hops aboard its first flight of the season as it heads southeast to the Bayou State for Southland Conference games at New Orleans and Southeastern Louisiana.
ACU (9-6) is playing each school for the first time but is 18-16 against the current crop of Southland programs, including Incarnate Word (12-8), Sam Houston State (6-5) and Stephen F. Austin (0-3).
Grant Boone will broadcast each game to air live in Abilene on
98.1 FM-The Ticket and via the ACU Sports Portal provided by
Stretch Internet's Game Central. ACU's Thursday game at New Orleans is scheduled for a 5:30 p.m. tip, while its Saturday game at Southeastern Louisiana will start at 2 p.m.
The Wildcats finished 2013 strong with wins over Jacksonville and Texas Tech, but couldn't extend their win streak into January as they started the new year with a 63-58 loss at a red-hot Texas-San Antonio - winners of seven straight. ACU hung with the Roadrunners every step of the way as it held the home team to 37.3 shooting and one three-pointer, but constant foul trouble led to 24 free baskets in 38 trips to the charity stripe.
"Overall, I'm pleased with where our team is entering conference play, but I'd rather not see us repeating the same mistakes," said head coach
Julie Goodenough. "UTSA gave us a great, hard-fought battle, but we kept making the same mistakes into the second half and they're a team that knows how to finish strong."
Against the Roadrunners, sophomore
Whitney West hit two late treys to lead all scorers with 18 points, while senior
Renata Marquez chipped in 17 with seven rebounds. Freshman
Lizzy Dimba also recorded her first game with 10 or more rebounds as the Wildcats finished with 35 boards to 36 for UTSA.
ACU, however, recorded only one rebound after tying the score at 50-50 with 3:43 remaining and that came off a missed free throw by Kamra King. A season-high 26 turnovers also prevented the Wildcats from catching the Roadrunners, who took off on two significant runs early in the second half that pushed their lead out to eight and six points, respectively.
"In finishing our two wins in Lubbock we realized the importance of rebounding," said Goodenough, "but we kind of forgot about that down the stretch of the UTSA game ... And as we get into conference season, we have to understand the importance of every single possession. It's no longer okay to lose the ball here and there, because we'll have to make up for that mistake on the next possession."
With a combined record of 2-25, winless New Orleans and two-win Southeastern Louisiana are more than a little desperate for victories. The Privateeers, who have only played three home games, are being outscored by an average of 36.5 points per game and are shooting just a tick above 30 percent from the floor. The Lions, meanwhile, haven't played a home game since their season-opening win on Nov. 8 vs. Mobile.
After beating Mobile, 78-68, the Lions lost 11 straight until handing McNeese State a 82-65 defeat on January 2, during which Senior forward Aja Gibson became the 18th student-athlete in school history to reach 1,000 career points. They then went to Nicholls and lost 84-55.
New Orleans, which was picked by the Southland coaches and sports information directors to finish 11th of 12 teams in their preseason poll, lost at both Nicholls and McNeese State last weekend. Against the Cowgirls, UNO guard Danielle Davis became the second Privateer this season to score 20-plus points in a game after posting 21, which raised her per-game average - over the last four games - to 15.3 points.
The Privateers' game vs. ACU will be their first home conference game since the 2009-10 season when they hosted Denver on Feb 20, 2010 while a member of the Sun Belt. And even though UNO appears to be weak on paper, Goodenough fully knows the difficulty of having to play on the road.
"Going on the road is hard," she said. "I'm interested to see how the team responds to its first plane ride because there's always at least one player every year who has never flow before. And then we get there and we're staying in hotels, eating at restaurants, and playing in someone else's gym, where they practice all day and night. All road games come with a very small margin of error, so we can't be making careless turnovers and missing blockouts."
Heading into this weekend, ACU still has the most wins this season of any Southland Conference team with nine and leads the league in six statistical categories, including scoring offense (74.9 ppg), scoring margin (+9.7), assists (15.6), steals (10.6), 3-pointers made (9.5) and 3-point field goal defense (.238).
Individually, Marquez is ranked among the league's top-15 leaders in scoring (13.2), and top-13 in rebounding (7.1), assists (3.5) and steals (2.1). She also is fourth with 3.7 offensive rebounds per game.
Suzzy Dimba has the second most double-doubles with seven, is eighth in rebounding (7.9), fifth in defensive rebounds (5.8), sixth in blocks (1.1) and second with a .415 3-point field goal percentage. West, meanwhile, is averaging the fifth-most 3-pointers per game (2.3).
