Nicholls experiencing education of different sort at Grand Canyon Women’s Basketball Classic

What does turkey taste like in the Grand Canyon?

Justin Payne and his women’s basketball team are learning that as part of a unique Thanksgiving bonding experience by taking part in the Grand Canyon University Women’s Classic in Phoenix.

The first-year Nicholls coach and his squad will be taking on Eastern Illinois at 1 p.m. Friday and host Grand Canyon University at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

“We preach family atmosphere,” Payne said. “It’s just going to be very, very nice to be able to be with our young student-athletes, bringing that Thanksgiving and put that culture together on a Thanksgiving trip is going to be very, very nice. We got some good things planned out for them. We’re excited for them. They deserve it, but we just want to make sure we’re taking care of business as well.”

Nicholls goes into the tournament 3-2 on the season after the Lady Colonels didn’t quite take care of business in their most recent outing at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette last Saturday.

The Lady Colonels let a 13-point fourth-quarter lead slip away and had to go to overtime against the Ragin’ Cajuns. The overtime period became a free-throw contest as ULL hit on 9 of 10 attempts in the period while Nicholls was 3 of 4 in falling 69-63. The Lady Colonels were 4 of 12 from the line in the fourth quarter.

“We missed some free throws that we feel like we normally would hit,” Payne said. “I think some pressure and some nerves got to us there, but we’ve learned a lot from the Louisiana game. We watched the film. We broke it down, especially late and that’s something we’ve been talking about in the preseason – it’s earning it, and we didn’t earn it. If we’d earned it, we would have made our free throws and took care of business at the end, but I love the way my young team competed.

“They’re ready to bounce back. They watched the film, and I think we’ve learned a valuable lesson late – all of us from the coaching staff down to the players. So we’re just excited about the way that they’re competing (with) their energy and we’re ready to get to the next one.”

The next one comes in the form of tournament play.

“A tournament is always huge for us because we want to be playing in tournaments in March. We’re taking this as this is March for us,” said Payne. “We want to make sure we’re bringing the energy to a neutral site. We just want to make sure that we’re preparing as we would for a tournament game in March.”

First up for Nicholls is an Eastern Illinois team that is 1-2 on the season. Eastern Illinois is coming off a 75-62 win over Valparaiso after opening the season with losses to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and ranked Indiana.

“They can really, really score it,” Payne said of Eastern Illinois. “I think one of our strengths is our defensive prowess. We need to make sure that that we’re on edge defensively. They can hurt you from a number of spots. They’ve got a couple of shooters that can really, really shoot it.”

One of the top performers is post player Mary McGlone, who is second on the team in scoring, averaging 12 points per game, while being tied for the team lead in rebounding with seven rebounds per outing.

“She’s really, really good on the inside,” Payne said. “She’s an all-league player, so we need to make sure we’re limiting her attempts and make sure that we limit her touches and try to limit them to one shot per possession.

“She’s just a dominant post player inside. It’s going to be a great matchup versus Lexi (Alexander), but I like our chances.”

Lalani Ellis is the team’s leading scorer at 17 points per game and also is averaging seven rebounds per contest.

“She’s going to be a haul,” said Payne. “We felt like we kind of seen that type of player before playing against Louisiana-Lafayette and some of the other players, some of the other teams we went up against.

“She’s another great player. She can get to the rim at will, and we need to make sure that we’re honing in on her and making sure we’re keeping her at bay. We want to hold her under her average, for sure.”

The other double-figure scorer for Eastern Illinois is Miah Monahan, averaging 10 points and leading the team in assists.

“She’s a great point guard, really knocking down open shots. We want to try to see if we can disrupt her a little bit and maybe disrupt their offense. She kind of gets them in all their offense and everything like that. We want to see if we can disrupt that,” Payne said.

Grand Canyon is 2-2 on the year. The Antelopes opened the season with wins over St. Mary’s 55-52 and North Dakota 73-61 but are on a two-game skid with losses of 64-56 to Oregon and 76-71 to Montana.

Naudia Evans and Trinity San Antonio both are averaging 12.8 points per game for Grand Canyon. San Antonio also is the team’s leading rebounder, averaging 7.3 per outing.

“We’ve got to keep them off the boards,” Payne explained. “We just got to do what we do on the defensive side of the basketball. That’s just compete with a different type energy, a different type of edge. We’re making sure that we limit both teams to one missed-shot opportunities and let’s see where the chips fall.”

What does Payne want to see out of his team coming off the tournament?

“I want to continue to be able to say our team is getting better, our team is continuing to put together a winning product, a fun product, but one that is establishing a winning culture,” the Nicholls coach said. “I feel like we’re on our way to doing that. Even with Louisiana, we were close to finishing these games now the way that we want to finish them. I think with just their film work and the work that these young ladies are putting out on the floor, we’re going to see it soon.”

There are a few things the Lady Colonels are expected to see soon.

“We’ll take them to the Phoenix Suns game and we’re going to feed them a nice Thanksgiving dinner,” Payne said. “We have a couple of restaurants that will cater to us and do some things like that for them. We’re going to try to make sure it’s special.”

There may be a trip to the actual Grand Canyon if they can squeeze in the time for an approximate four-hour drive from Phoenix.

“We’re re trying to find that balance right now with the games to actually go to the Grand Canyon,” said Payne. “It’s going to be hard for us not to do that while we’re out there, right? We want to try to make sure we find that whether it’s after our Saturday game or before Eastern Illinois, where we can actually take them to see the Grand Canyon.”