Lady Lions to face Prairie View A&M
After a disappointing end to last week’s road trip, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff is turning its attention to its final home stand of the season.
The UAPB women’s basketball team hosts Prairie View A&M at 3 p.m. today and Texas Southern at 5:30 p.m. Monday at H.O. Clemmons Arena.
UAPB (14-12, 9-4 SWAC) will play its next three games at home before finishing the regular season on the road. The Lady Lions can clinch a spot in the SWAC tournament with a win against Prairie View, but coach Dawn Thornton said they have higher goals than just reaching the tournament.
“We’ve made it to the tournament every year that I’ve been here but one, so making it to the tournament I know is what we’ll do,” Thornton said. “Securing a good, comfortable spot is what we really want to do, so that’s what we wanna make sure that we can focus on, and we gotta take it one game at a time. We can’t overlook one person more than the other.”
UAPB was alone in second place at one point, but losing two of the past three games has dropped the Lady Lions into a tie with Southern for third, one game behind Grambling State. The Lady Jaguars and Lady Tigers will play at 3 p.m. Saturday in Baton Rouge in a game that has implications for UAPB’s final place in the SWAC standings.
The Lady Lions are coming off a loss at Alabama A&M in which they fell behind 17-2 in the first quarter. In other recent games, UAPB fell behind 14-7 against Alcorn State and was tied at 15 with 11th place Alabama State after the first
quarter. UAPB went on to win both games comfortably but never recovered against the Lady Bulldogs.
Thornton said the players need to go into games mentally prepared.
“We have to look at that at some point,” Thornton said. “I haven’t really understood why we’re like that, because we do a really good job as far as getting them warm early. But when we’re off to a slow start, it seems to be like, defensively, we’re not where we need to be as far as being the aggressor. It’s more so a passiveness that we display.”
Prairie View A&M (914, 5-8) was on a four-game winning streak when UAPB beat the Lady Panthers 77-48 on the road, and the Panthers haven’t won since. They are in a threeway tie for seventh.
Texas Southern (5-19, 4-9) beat UAPB 85-80 in Houston. The Lady Tigers also have wins over Grambling, Alabama A&M and Bethune-Cookman.
Thornton said the Lady Lions must treat every game like a championship game, and starting strong will be key.
“We gotta do what we need to do early and take care of business early so we’re not affected from playing behind,” Thornton said. “Because for whatever reason, this team likes to play from in the driver’s seat. In order to stay in the driver’s seat, you gotta be able to defend and box out and rebound and limit them to one shot.”
UAPB center Maori Davenport missed the past four games after suffering a head injury in the previous Prairie View game but is expected back today.
UAPB declined to comment on the incident, which occurred in the final seconds of the Alabama A&M loss, saying it wants to instead look forward to this weekend’s games. The game ended with 21.9 seconds remaining after a few UAPB players appeared to get physical with one another.