Game Notes
DALLAS, Texas—The Alabama State University Hornets have arrived in Dallas for their first game in the 2013 Toyota Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) Basketball Tournament.
ASU is slated to play Jackson State University in their first game Thursday, March 14 at 12:30 p.m. The tournament is being held in Garland at the Curtis Culwell Center.
The Hornets enter the tournament as the fifth seed and have a 10-21 overall record. JSU comes into the game as the tournament's second seed and has a 10-17 overall record.
Both games between the two teams this season went down to the final minutes with the Hornets winning 70-66 in Montgomery and JSU pulling out a 70-65 overtime win in Jackson.
JSU enters the tournament as the league's third best scoring offense averaging 66 points per game. That scoring average is helped by the fact JSU is second in the conference in field goal percentage (.438) and in free throw percentage (.681). They are also one of the top shooting three point team's in the conference shooting .319 percent (third) from beyond the three point line.
JSU suffers on defense allowing 72.2 points per game (8
th) and seventh in the field goal percentage defense as the opposition is shooting .389 from the field.
ASU is averaging 61.9 points per game with is eight in the conference and third in the conference in shooting at .408. ASU has struggled from the free throw line over the last few weeks of the season and stand ninth in the conference shooting .598 from the free throw line.
ASU's defense is sixth in the conference allowing 69.8 points per game. The opposition is shooting .433 against ASU which is sixth.
The Tigers have three double-digit scorers led by Kelsey Howard's 14.9 points per game. Dundrecous Nelson averages 14.3 and Christian Williams 13.4. Willie Readus is the team's leading rebounder grabbing 5.1 per game.
Jonathan Lewis leads the team with 46 assists while Christian Williams has a team-leading 58 three point field goals and 44 steals.
Joshua Freelove continues to lead the Hornets in scoring at 13.7 points per game and
Phillip Crawford is next at 12.4. Crawford is also the team's leading rebounder (6.0) and field goal shooter, knocking down 56 percent of his shots.
ASU has spent the past week preparing for the tournament working on some of their problem areas.
“We have spent a lot of practice time working on our defense,” Head Coach
Lewis Jackson said. “We have to improve at getting stops, especially late in the game. We went back to looking at our foot work and keeping the ball in front of us. We also spent a lot of time working on our rebounding.”
It seems like everytime ASU and JSU meet on the court it is a game that goes down to the wire and that is what the coaching staff and players are expecting again with this game.
“We know it is going to be a hard fought game,” Jackson said. “When it is ASU and JSU you know both teams are going to play hard. We know what they are going to do and they know what we are going to do so it is going to come down to playing hard and executing.”
