Southaven, Miss-The Lady Blazers, who clinched the first-ever undefeated conference regular season in school history (10-0), will start the tournament off on Thursday afternoon when they play the fourth seed from the Western division, Christian Brothers University.
“This would be one of the better teams that we’ve coached,” Kiley Hill, VSU head coach, said. “These kids have played together and have believed in each other very well and we’re going to ride the streak as long as it happens.”
CBU, who has the shortest drive of any team in the tournament (20 minutes), finished the regular season with a 15-11 overall record and a 6-8 conference record. The Lady Bucs are led by Tameka Wooten, who has started all 26 games for the team. The five foot four inch senior is averaging just less than 16 points per game while averaging five rebounds per contest. Along with Wooten, three other Lady Bucs, Sheena Debose, Normanique Johnson and Jasmine Ellis, also average double-figure scoring on the season.
“We have to put the ball in a lot of different positions, but they can counter us many different ways,” Hill said. “We have to be able to put our people in the right positions consistently.”
CBU enters the GSC tournament with a clear starting lineup as Wooten, Debose, Johnson and Katie Hume have started every game on the season, while Ellis has started 24 games on the season due to an injury that kept her out of two games this season.
“Their starting lineup is pretty solid but they don’t have a lot of depth,” Hill said. “Hopefully we can use that to our advantage. From our standpoint we have to do what we do. We have to be able to dominate inside.”
On the season CBU averages 63.4 points per game, while allowing just over 68 points per game, while VSU enters the contest averaging 64 points per game, while allowing just 53.6 points per game.
With a first round win, the Lady Blazers would then move on to the weekend portion of the tournament to face either West Alabama, who the Lady Blazers swept this season by a combined 53 points, or Delta State, who defeated VSU 54-41 on Dec. 15 at the Complex.
“We’ve never played three games in four games but we have played six games in nine days if you date back to the first part of January,” Hill said. “We understand those challenges and we understand what the focus is […] and [how] to compete for a conference championship. Once you get by the first game everyone is in the same boat.”
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