SOUTHLAND CONFERENCE TOURNAMENT PAGE
KUCA RADIO BROADCAST (pregame begins 1:10)
KATY, Texas — Central Arkansas will open its fourth straight Southland Conference tournament on Friday with a familiar foe as the Sugar Bears meet up with the McNeese State Cowgirls at 1:30 for a chance to face off against regular season co-champion Stephen F. Austin in Saturday's semifinal.
The pairing will pit two Southland Tournament mainstays against one another as it is the fourth straight season the Sugar Bears and Cowgirls have reached the postseason tournament at the Merrell Center. SFA and Lamar are the only others to have qualified for the tournament in each of the last four years.
The 3rd-seeded Sugar Bears (18-11) will meet the 7th-seeded Cowgirls (18-12), who defeated No. 6 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 78-73 in Thursday's opening-round contest. It will be the second meeting in Katy between the two programs, with the Cowgirls defeating the Sugar Bears 71-50 in the 2011 tournament championship game.
Friday's meeting will be the second of the season between UCA and McNeese, with the Sugar Bears winning 65-50 at the Lake Charles Civic Center on Jan. 30. In that game, the Sugar Bears ran out to a 46-27 halftime lead they shot 53.1 percent from the field in the half and finished the game shooting 50 percent from the 3-point line while holding McNeese to 38.2 percent shooting from the field.
Maggie Proffitt led the Sugar Bears in scoring with 17 points, making 7 of 11 from the field including 3 of 5 from 3-point range, while Courtney Duever had 15 points and 12 rebounds, and Brianna Mullins 12 and 7.
Allison Baggett, McNeese's 2nd team All-Southland sophomore guard who had 27 points in Thursday's win over A&M-Corpus Christi, had 14 points and 4 rebounds in the Cowgirls' loss to the Sugar Bears earlier this season. Cecilia Okoye, another 2nd team All-Southland performer this season, had 15 points and 8 rebounds in that game.
McNeese center NeTanya Jones, who had just 2 points and no rebounds in 9 minutes against the Sugar Bears, had a big day for the Cowgirls on Thursday with 17 points and 9 rebounds. Jayln Johnson also had 17 points and a game-high 6 assists for the Cowgirls in Thursday's win.
Baggett was the 4th-leading scorer in Southland play this season, averaging 17.4 per game – just ahead of Duever's 16.8. Okoye averaged 11.4 points and 9.4 rebounds. Johnson averaged 10.8 points and was 6th in the conference with 4.3 assists per game.
The Sugar Bears are 2-3 all-time in Katy, winning their first two games in 2011 as the No. 3 seed against Stephen F. Austin and Lamar before falling to the Cowgirls in the championship game. In 2012, as the No. 1 seed after winning the regular season championship with a 15-1 conference record, the Sugar Bears were ousted in the first round by 8th-seeded Nicholls on a day the Colonels broke the Southland Tournament record by hitting 14 3-pointers (a mark they matched on Thursday in a win over Oral Roberts) en route to a 79-59 win. Last season the Sugar Bears were again eliminated in the first round, falling 64-59 to SFA.
The Sugar Bears come into the tournament on a three-game skid, having lost 56-53 to league co-champion and top-seeded Lamar on March 1 in the final home game of the season before going on the road and dropping consecutive games to Northwestern State (the tournament's No. 4 seed) 77-45 and league co-champion SFA, the tournament's No. 2 seed.
