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Game Notes

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Eastern Kentucky’s women’s basketball team will end its two-game road trip on Sunday at Tennessee State. The game was postponed from Saturday due to a winter storm moving through the region. The two teams will play at 4 p.m. ET.

The game will air live in the Richmond area on WEKY 1340 AM, and can be heard worldwide on EKUSports.com.

The Lady Colonel coaching staff will participate in the Coaches vs. Cancer Suits and Sneakers awareness weekend. The event, a collaborative initiative of the American Cancer Society and the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), is slated for the weekend of Jan. 29-31. Participating NABC member coaches will wear sneakers instead of dress shoes with their suits during weekend games to demonstrate their support for the American Cancer Society and its vision of a world with less cancer and more birthdays.

This is the 45th meeting between Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee State. EKU leads the all-time series 31-13. The Lady Colonels snapped a four-game losing skid to TSU earlier this season. Eastern is 11-10 all-time against the Lady Tigers in Nashville.

The two teams met for the first time this season on Jan. 2. Eastern Kentucky shot 46.7 percent from the field, made 19-of-25 attempts from the free throw line in a 64-56 win over Tennessee State. The Lady Tigers went just 12-for-26 (46.2 percent) from the charity stripe. The Lady Colonels took a six-point lead midway through the second half before the Lady Tigers tied it twice. TSU then cut a five-point deficit to one with two minutes to go but Eastern held Tennessee State to just two points and went 7-for-8 from the free throw line the rest of the way.

In a battle of two of the premier post players in the conference, freshman Alex Jones led the Lady Colonels with 14 points and nine rebounds. She also had four steals, two blocks and an assist. Senior Oby Okafor scored a team-best 16 points, added six rebounds and one steal for Tennessee State.

In their last game, the Lady Colonels held Austin Peay to 23 points in the first half and led by five at the break, but the Lady Govs shot 51.9 percent and scored 45 points in the second half en route to a 68-57 victory on Thursday. Freshman Shakeyia Colyer and junior Cherie White led EKU with 15 points each. White added eight rebounds and Colyer contributed seven.

In Eastern’s last four games, Colyer has averaged 13.5 points, six boards and two assists per game while hitting 46.8 percent of her shots.

Since falling to the Lady Colonels in Richmond, Tennessee State has gone 3-4. The Lady Tigers beat Murray State and UT Martin at home and edged Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, a place where EKU lost by 28 points.

Two of TSU’s four losses over that time have come to Morehead State. On Thursday the Lady Tigers jumped out to a 28-19 halftime lead before the Eagles rallied in the second half. Tennessee State held MSU to 17.2 percent (5-for-29) shooting in the first half and limited the nation’s most prolific three-point shooting team to six treys for the game. The difference in the second half came at the free throw line where Morehead State connected on 29-of-34 attempts, out-scoring TSU by 17 at the line.

Oby Okafor had 11 points and 13 rebounds for Tennessee State. Meredith Stafford scored a team-best 22 points for the Lady Tigers.

Okafor leads the team with an average of 15.1 points and eight rebounds per game. She ranks third and fifth in the OVC in those categories. No other active Lady Tiger averages more than 7.2 points per game. Jasmine Smith averages 7.9 points and 6.7 boards per game but hasn’t played TSU’s last six games.
Stafford’s 22-point performance raised her average to 7.2 points per game. LaDona Pierce has 85 assists and ranks fourth in the OVC with an average of 4.5 per game.