Women's Basketball | 1/8/2016 3:26:00 PM
Game Notes | Live Stats | Video | Audio ABILENE – Abilene Christian women's basketball returns to the road Sunday for a 1 p.m. game against its Southland Conference rivals from Nicholls. The game will be locally broadcast on Abilene's
98.1 FM – The Ticket – by the 'Voice of the Wildcats'
Grant Boone.
Live stats and video stream will be offered through
GeauxColonels.com.
ACU (11-2, 2-0) comes into this challenging contest riding a seven-game winning streak, which includes five road victories between stops in Colorado Springs, Eastern Washington, Idaho and Central Arkansas. The Wildcats also are the only unbeaten team in conference play and won their only previous game at Nicholls' Stopher Gym two seasons ago, rallying from 12-points down to defeat the Colonels, 78-62.
Nicholls, however, truly got the best of the Wildcats in last season's rematch, handing ACU its worst loss in 30 years, 67-39, at Moody Coliseum.
The Colonels are off to a 3-9 start and split their first two Southland Conference games as they followed a 69-59 win over preseason favorite Lamar with an 80-71 loss at Houston Baptist. Marina Lilly registered a 15-point / 10-rebound double-double vs. the Cardinals in picking up Southland Conference Player of the Week honors, while the Colonels' leading scorers this season have been Tia Charles and Hope Pawlowski with 10.3 and 10.2 points per game, respectively.
As for the Wildcats, they defeated the Lady Demons for the first time in three games Thursday night, 67-46 – a contest in which ACU outrebounded Northwestern State, 48-20. The +28 rebounding advantage was ACU's largest since a December 2013 game vs. Texas Wesleyan (61-32, +29) and the widest ever against a NCAA DI opponent.
Sydney Shelstead led ACU with a team-season high 13 rebounds and added 16 points for her third double-double of the season, while NSU's 20 total rebounds were the fewest recorded by an ACU opponent in a single game since Texas Woman's had 20 in a game played on Dec. 14, 2009.
Northwestern State started conference action with two victories but was held to .306 shooting (15-49) and mustered only 14 points between the second and third quarters. Of the Lady Demons' 15 field goals, only eight were made from inside the 3-point arc as starting post players Tia Youngblood and Cheyenne Brown each finished with four points.
All-Southland competitor Janelle Perez scored 16 points on 6-17 shooting and Beatrice Attura was the only other Lady Demon to reach double figures with 11 points.
For the Wildcats,
Suzzy Dimba pulled down 10 rebounds vs. NSU in addition to dishing out a game-high five assists and picking off three passes. Incredibly, she is the only player in the Southland Conference who leads her team in assists (37), blocks (25) and steals (37). Suzzy also is 11 rebounds behind her sister, Lizzy, who leads the Wildcats with 104 boards.
Alexis Mason produced her third 20-point game of the year, scoring 23 points on 8-15 shooting with four 3-pointers, and senior guard
Whitney West Swinford inched closer to breaking Ashley King's school records for most treys made and attempted.
With 16 games left in the regular season, Swinford is 17 attempts and 38 makes shy of the records set by Ashley King between 2002-06.
King made 239 treys on 625 attempts (.382) and Swinford has connected 201 times on 608 attempts (.330). Swinford scored her 1,000th career point in ACU's win over Central Arkansas and will play in her 100th game as a Wildcat on Sunday at Nicholls.
