Dec. 19, 2007

Complete Game Notes in PDF Format

The University of Memphis women's basketball team has two games remaining before the holiday break, and both will be played as part of the Florida Gulf Coast Tournament in Ft. Myers, beginning on Thursday.

Memphis will face Loyola-Chicago, a member of the Horizon Conference. The Ramblers are 1-8 through their first nine games and have not played since falling 93-51 at nationally-ranked DePaul on Dec. 15th. The Thursday night game will be Loyola's first game since completing exams.

Loyola won its season opener against Robert Morris, 67-52, at home. Two Ramblers are averaging double-digits for Loyola, led by 11.2 points from Maggie McCloskey. McCloskey is assisted in scoring by Elyse VanBogaert with 11.1 points per game and a team-high 14 blocked shots on the season.

Memphis is looking to snap a three-game losing streak of its own, after falling 91-66 at a red-hot Arkansas team. Arkansas used multiple weapons to down the Lady Tigers, finishing with five players in double-digit points.

Two of Memphis' four leading scorers are trying to bounce back from single-digit scoring efforts at Arkansas. Leading scorer Ashley Thornton was held to just three points and four rebounds, well under her average of 12.8 points and 8.1 rebounds per game, while Aroha Jennings was held to just six points and three rebounds, dropping Jennings' scoring average to 10.1 points and 5.0 rebounds per game.

This will be the first meeting in school history between Memphis and Loyola and marks the first neutral site game of the year for the Lady Tigers. But Memphis should have some fans in attendance as guard Jessica Hall is a Florida native, hailing from Tallahassee.

Memphis has not faced either of the other two teams in the tournament heading in to the weekend. UT Pan American is 6-4 overall after falling 53-42 to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the championship game of the TAMCC tournament on Monday.

Florida Gulf Coast is 3-5 coming in to the tournament, but already has one win over a C-USA opponent, having beaten UCF on the road 81-75 before falling 72-51 to Florida A&M in their last outing.

These two games will be the final games before the team breaks for the holidays. The Lady Tigers return home to host Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Dec. 28th in the Elma Roane Fieldhouse. That game is set for 7 p.m.

The game can be heard in Memphis on WUMR, 91.7 FM with Jeff Brightwell calling the play-by-play. Fans who cannot tune to 91.7 in Memphis can listen to the live play-by-play through a subscription to the All-Access package from the www.gotigersgo.com website.

Memphis vs. Loyola-Chicago
This is the first-ever meeting between Memphis and Loyola.

Just Our Third Game Away From Home
The neutral site game against Loyola will mark just the third game of the season for Memphis away from the Elma Roane Fieldhouse. Memphis lost its season-opening road game at Creighton, then fell at Arkansas Tuesday night in just its second true road game of the year.

Not the Normal Four in Double Digits
With four players averaging double-digit points, it should be no surprise that Memphis had four double-digit scorers in the loss at Arkansas. What was a surprise was that leading scorer Ashley Thornton managed just three points, while Aroha Jennings' managed just six points on 2-of-4 shooting. Thornton's three points came from a place where she had never scored before in her Lady Tiger career, three-point range. Both will need to get on track in this tournament before Memphis returns with just two non-conference games remaining before opening league play at UAB in January.

The two newcomers to the double-digit scorers were transfers Latoya Bullard and Jessica Jackson. Jackson sparked a late first half Memphis run by scoring nine straight points, finishing with 10 for the night, but got in to foul trouble late in the first half. Bullard was a multi-faceted threat for Memphis, driving and kicking the ball out to open shooters and knocking down a pair of three-point field goals of her own. She also led the team with four steals in 30 minutes of play.

You Know It's Not Going to Be Your Day When...
Arkansas opened the game Tuesday night on a 26-6 run. Much to the Lady Tigers' credit, the team battled back, but Arkansas had an answer for every Memphis run, finishing with all five starters in double-digits as Memphis would finally slow down one aspect of the Razorbacks game, only to have another player step up. For the game, Arkansas shot 54.8 percent from the field and 90 percent from the free-throw line, missing just two attempts out of 20. Memphis had trouble drawing fouls all night, making just 10 trips to the line.

Bored of Hearing About Boards?
Memphis has won the battle of the boards just two times this season, in the season-opening loss to Tennessee Tech, and again in the win over Alabama A&M. That bad news for Memphis is that after getting out-rebounded by single digit margins in three games, the Lady Tigers have been outdone by a combined 60 rebounds over the last three games (Mississippi State, Belmont, Arkansas).

One of the Positives
One of the positives following the Arkansas game was not only the multiple runs Memphis kept making to trim the deficit from early in the game, but that the 66 Lady Tiger points was the most points Arkansas has given up all season. Prior to that game, Arkansas had given up more than 50 points in just six of 11 contests. Lady Razorback opponents passed the 60-point mark just three times before Memphis scored 66 in the loss.

Ellis Blocking It Out
Freshman post Savannah Ellis has had some productive stat lines in the last handful of games. And she heads in to the Florida Gulf Coast tournament with a blocked shot in each of the past four games, dating back to the Alabama A&M game. Against Arkansas, Ellis came off the bench, and while her offense still is developing, she finished with three rebounds, one assist, one blocked shot and a steal in 11 minutes of play. She also gave Memphis some rare post defense against a tandem of post players (Whitney Jones, Lauren Ervin) unlike any Memphis has seen so far this season.