ABILENE, Texas - After playing just once over the past two weeks, Abilene Christian's women's basketball team will embark on grueling three-game Louisiana road trip this weekend, taking the Wildcats to Nicholls, McNeese State and Southeastern Louisiana.
ACU is meeting Nicholls and McNeese State for the first time in program history, and its only prior meeting against Southeastern Louisiana took place during the 1978-79 season (L, 104-69).
Live stats are available for all three games, and the contests at Nicholls (Thursday at 2 p.m.) and McNeese State (Sunday at 1 p.m.) will be broadcast live in Abilene on 98.1 FM - The Ticket. Those games also can be heard through the ACU Sports portal provided by Stretch Internet's Game Central.
ACU's weekend opponents all are jousting for position in the Southland Conference standings as only three games remain on the schedule. The Nicholls Colonels (14-11) begin the week tied for third place with Stephen F. Austin at 9-5, while the Cowgirls of McNeese (15-10) are a game behind at 8-6.
Southeastern Louisiana (8-17) has won its last two games to climb above .500 vs. the conference and will play host to the Wildcats (15-11) Monday at 1 p.m. in a game the Lions were previously asked to forfeit.
Hours after the Wildcats left for New Orleans on their first conference road trip of the season, the Southland's Executive Committee found that the Southeastern Louisiana women's basketball team was in violation of NCAA Bylaw 20.9.8.1, which states: "An institution may schedule and play not more than four basketball games, including any contest (e.g., scrimmage, exhibition), in an academic year against institutions that are not members of Division I (Revised: 3/1/12).
This rule directly affected the Wildcats throughout the 2013-14 academic year, because as a new Southland program transitioning from Division II both they and Incarnate Word were not considered Division I schedule-counters. All Southland teams had single games scheduled against ACU and UIW in 2013-14, and have had to adjust to the non-countable scheduling aspect of playing these teams.
Several days later, however, the NCAA reached out to the Southland regarding the bylaw and offered a waiver opportunity that temporarily set aside the rule's limits on the number of allowable contests in a season against non-Division I teams.
As a result of this reprieve, the game between the Lions and Wildcats was tacked onto the end of ACU's original road trip to Nicholls and McNeese.
ACU enters the weekend on a two-game winning streak although the Wildcats haven't played a full weekend slate since early February when they split a homestand vs. Houston Baptist (W, 82-70) and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (L, 71,-74). But following that heartbreaking last-minute loss to the Islanders, ACU pulled off a dramatic second-half comeback at Incarnate Word on ESPN3 and then absolutely destroyed Arlington Baptist at Moody Coliseum, 108-56.
Half of ACU's 108 points that evening were scored from 3-point range as the team had six players score in double figures and set a pair of program records with 18 3-point buckets on 50 attempts (.360). The old records of 17 and 46 were set earlier this season vs. Texas Lutheran on Nov. 8.
ACU's 18 treys moved them into a tie for third place nationally with Oregon at 9.3 threes per game. Sacramento State leads NCAA DI in this category with 12.5 per game and Florida Gulf Coast is second with 10.0.
The leading individual performance against the Patriots was delivered by senior
Renata Marquez, who scored a career-high 32 points on 12-of-24 shooting and tied a school record with eight three pointers. She also also dished out five or more assists for the 14th time in her career, surpassed 1000 career field goal attempts and set a person season scoring record of 374 points.
With four games remaining, Marquez needs just 26 points to become the 25th member of ACU's 400-Point Club.
Following last Tuesday's game, Marquez moved up to 10th in league scoring (14.4), 18th in rebounding (5.9), ninth in assists (3.7) and second in steals (2.2) to Nicholls Emani White (2.3). Marquez also ranks sixth with 3.0 offensive rebounds per game and 2.2 3-point field goals made per game.
Also ranked among the conference's individual leaders are
Whitney West with 2.4 3-pointers per game and freshman
Suzzy Dimba, who has as many double-doubles this year (nine) as the whole ACU team did last season. Dimba's double-double total is the fifth-highest in the league as is her 8.9 rebounding average and 1.4 blocks per game.
Dimba, along with her twin sister, Lizzy, and six other true freshmen on the team have combined for 1,224 points through 26 games; a total that accounts for 62.5 percent of the Wildcats' 1,957 points. By comparison, Indiana basketball's talented freshman class has combined to score 1,155 points which is 59.4 percent of the team's total points scored this season. Both of those totals are tops in the Big Ten.
Nicholls is 2-2 over its last four games but has one of the best home records in the Southland Conference at 9-1. Both the league and Colonels are led in scoring by White - a sophomore who is averaging 19.2 points per game on .384 shooting.
Nicholls also has the conference's best 3-point and free-throw percentages of .341 and .730 as well as the most steals per game (10.3) and highest turnover margin of +5.5.
McNeese State was the latest to fall to the Colonels, dropping a 76-66 decision in Thibodaux, La. on Feb. 22. But prior to that the Cowgirls had won four of their last five, including road games at Northwestern State (59-57) and Southeastern Louisiana (75-61).
The McNeese offense is led by the league's No. 2 scorer Allison Baggett (17.6) and Cecilia Okoye (11.1). Okoye also has 13 blocks along with teammate NeTanya Jones and is tied with
Suzzy Dimba in rebounding with 8.9 boards per game.
Southeastern Louisiana started the year 1-11, but started to get things turnaround in January with three wins in its first five conference games vs. McNeese State, Incarnate Word and Lamar. The Lions also have gone on to beat Houston Baptist, sweep their season series with New Orleans and scored a two-point win vs. Nicholls on Feb. 15.
Southeastern has four players averaging double figures in scoring led by Symone Miller's 14.0 points per game. Nanna Pool is averaging a double-double of 12.2 points and 10.4 rebounds.
