Hornets Host Rival Alabama A&M
MONTGOMERY – As soon as Alabama State’s win over Mississippi Valley State was over this past Monday night, all attention turned to rival Alabama A&M for Saturday’s 5 p.m. match up at the Dunn-Oliver Acadome.
“It’s going to be a tough battle,” Head Coach Lewis Jackson said. “They pretty much know what we are going to do and we know some of the things they are going to do, but it’s just going to be a tough ball game.”
“We have to play great defense. They have a couple of guys that can put the ball up in a hurry and we have to do a better job of defending that and we have to come out and be more physical. We have to impose our will on teams when we have size advantage on them and we certainly have to do that on Saturday.”
It seems as if the Hornets are facing the SWAC’s leading scorer every game and that is the case again Saturday. AAMU’s Ladarius Tabb is coming off a 23-point game against Arkansas-Pine Bluff which pushed his scoring average to a league-leading 17.5 points per game.
Tabb is not the only conference leader ASU will face in Saturday’s action. AAMU’s (6-15/5-6 SWAC) big man, Nicholas West, leads the conference in rebounding averaging 7.8 per game. Point guard Rakiya Battle is the league leader in assists with 114, averaging 5.4 per game.
ASU (14-6/10-1 SWAC) will once again enter the game as the SWAC’s leading scoring team at 73.9 points per game. While the Hornets don’t have any league leaders in scoring they do have a balanced scoring punch that has made it hard for the opponents to worry about stopping one person.
Jamel Waters is the leader on the court for ASU. He averages a team-high 12.9 points per game and his 5.2 assists and 41 steals are also team highs.
DeMarcus Robinson went through a mid-season slump, but is averaging almost 18 points per game over the past three games and is shooting 60 percent from the field (18-30), 50 percent from beyond the three point line (7-14) and 91 percent at the free throw line (10-11). He has his average back up to 10.6 points per game.
Maurice Strong averages 10 points per game and is one of the top rebounders in the conference averaging seven per game while leading the conference shooting 50 percent from the field.
Wendell Lewis (9.3), Bobby Brown (9.1) and Luther Page (8.3) have all led the Hornets in scoring in ball games this season. Brown did not play in the Hornets last game nursing an injury. His availability will be determined at game time.
