Nicholls women’s basketball team jockeying for tourney seeding in final road games

Having defeated Texas A&M-Commerce in the final home game of the season last Saturday, the Nicholls women’s team closes out the year with three road games.

This week, Nicholls takes on Northwestern State at 6:30 p.m. Thursday and McNeese State at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Having already clinched a spot in the Southland Conference postseason tournament, the Lady Colonels definitely have seeding on their mind down the stretch of the regular season.

Nicholls goes into the week 7-8 in the Southland Conference. Northwestern State enters 6-9, while McNeese is winless at 0-15.

UIW currently sits in the four spot. With Nicholls and New Orleans 7-8, and with Texas A&M-Commerce and Northwestern 6-9, there is still some jockeying for position. Teams at the bottom of the standings such as McNeese and Houston Christian also could factor in the role of spoilers.

“You almost could be four through eight,” Nicholls coach Justin Payne said. “We want to stay in good rhythm. We want to continue to play well. I feel like we’re finding something here down the stretch late. I just want our girls to continue to stay confident. I just want our girls feeling fresh and healthy. If we can continue to do that, I like our chances.”

Northwestern State goes into its game with Nicholls 10-16 overall. In an earlier game between the teams in Thibodaux, Nicholls came away with a narrow 60-57 victory.

Although it was always by a close margin, Nicholls trailed most of the game.

Deonna Brister, who scored all 12 of her points in the fourth quarter, scored on a driving layup with 23 seconds left in the game to give Nicholls a 58-57 lead.

The Lady Demons were working down the clock in the final seconds when Jiselle Woodson was called for a double dribble with six seconds left in the game.

Northwestern State was forced to foul, sending Brister to the free-throw line and hitting the final two of her eight free throws with two seconds remaining.

“It was a while ago, but Deanna Brister was huge late in that game,” Payne said. “We really went to her late. We liked her mismatch. We felt like we would have a mismatch there.

“It’s going to be critical up there. It’s gonna be even tougher to play in Natchitoches. They play really, really well at home. It’s their blackout game Thursday night. We’re going to have to bring it. We’re going to have to play really well like we’ve been doing. We’re going to have to guard them. They’re playing with some confidence.”

The Lady Demons only have two double-figure scorers. Karmelia Dean leads the team, averaging 11.9 points per game. Sharna Ayres is close behind at 11.5. Ayres is also the team’s leading rebounder, averaging 5.7 rebounds per outing.

Jenny Mtambwe is sixth in the Southland in field goal percentage, while Ayres and Dean are eighth and10th, respectively, in the conference in 3-point percentage.

“Ayres is really shooting it, and Dean can get to the rim at will, and she’s shooting it well,” said Payne. “We’re going to have to keep those two in check on top of keeping their post players in check. I thought last time their post play hurt us and they played really, really good defense. I think the thing that turned it around for us was our points off turnovers. We went to a trapping defense and turned them over and was able to get points off of that. Down the stretch, we went to Brister.

“We just need to make sure we play a complete game this time on the road. It’s going to be tougher on the road, we know that. We need to we need to make sure we’re hitting on all cylinders.”

McNeese, which entered the week 4-24 overall, hosts Houston Christian on Thursday.

“You always think that they’re gonna win,” said Payne. “You just hope it’s not against you. It’s a Saturday game. The crowd is going to be there because their men have been unbelievable. Their men versus our men, it’s going to be packed in our game. I’m sure the girls are going to feed off of that, but we want our young ladies to feed off of it too, and just bring the energy.

“We’re not looking at them like they are 0-and-whatever. We’re looking at it as, ‘hey, this is a playoff game. We have to win so we don’t go home.”

Nicholls and McNeese will be playing for the second time in 12 days. Nicholls defeated the Cowgirls 81-67 when the teams played in Thibodaux.

Playing a team seeking its first conference win, Nicholls led McNeese by as many as 18 points before the Cowgirls eventually tied the game 57-57 in the opening minute of the fourth quarter.

Nicholls was leading 59-58 before going on a 10-point run to put the game away. Britiya Curtis hit a pair of 3-pointers during the spree.

“They’ve been kind of doing that. Watching the game versus Corpus, Corpus was up 20-something.  They came back and took the lead against Corpus, went up by like five, then Corpus kind of pulled away again at the end,” Payne said. “It wasn’t a surprise that they did that. They’ve been doing it; they just haven’t been able to finish and actually win a game. We understand when you got them down, you’ve got to really put them away because they’re not going away. They’re going to continue to fight and continue to claw back in games.”

Much of McNeese’s offense comes from Emilia Tenbrock, who is second in the SLC in scoring, averaging 15.4 points per game.

“I’m very familiar with Tenbrock. She transferred from the Division II league that we were in. We’re very familiar with her. She played against us a whole lot,” said Payne. “We had Daelyn Craig on her because Daelyn played her up there at Georgia Southwestern versus where she came from was Columbus. We’ve got some history. We feel like we have a good game plan with her. It’s not like some of these other teams who haven’t seen her. We’ve seen her pretty much for three years.”

 Mireia Yespes is second on the team in scoring, averaging 11.5 points. Yespes is 10th in the conference in field goal percentage at 45.4 percent.

Julia Puente and Clara Rosini share the team lead in rebounding, averaging 5.5 boards per outing.

Two aspects are likely to come into play if Nicholls is to close out the regular season with wins, according to Payne.

“Defense and rebounding. Defense and rebounding. That’ll be the key. That’ll be the key,” the Nicholls coach said.