Marshall University Athletics
Herd Women Travel to Southern Miss in Regular-Season Finale
2/23/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 23, 2007
Marshall at Southern Miss Game Notes
Download Free Acrobat Reader
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - The Marshall women's basketball team will close out the 2006-07 regular season on the road when it faces Southern Miss in an important Conference USA game at Reed Green Coliseum on Saturday. Tip-off is at 3 p.m. ET.
Depending on Saturday's result with Southern Miss and the SMU-UTEP outcome, Marshall (15-13, 8-7) will finish the season with the sixth, seventh or eighth seed at next week's C-USA Championship in Tulsa, Okla. The Thundering Herd needs a win on Saturday plus an SMU loss to clinch the sixth seed where it would face No. 11 UCF in the first round.
Marshall, SMU and Southern Miss (14-14, 8-7) are tied at 8-7 in conference action. SMU holds the tiebreaker with Marshall due to its win over the Herd in Dallas on Feb. 11. With a win over USM and a Rice loss to Memphis on Saturday, the Herd and Owls would finish tied in the standings - but Rice owns the tiebreaker due to its head-to-head win over MU on Jan. 11.
MU upended UCF on Thursday while Southern Miss fell at home to East Carolina. The Herd enjoyed its biggest offensive outburst of the season in its first meeting with USM on Jan. 7, scoring 96 points on 57.1 percent shooting, both season highs. Marshall won 96-83 at the Cam Henderson Center.
Herd head coach Royce Chadwick shuffled his starting lineup at UCF on Thursday due to MU's relentless injury woes. Forward KaShawna Curry (Huntington, W.Va.) started at point guard for the first time of her career and freshman Alix Barnette (Chapel Hill, N.C.) notched her first career start. Junior forward Meagan Samis (Oklahoma City, Okla.), who has battled an arm injury since Feb. 1, posted only her second start of the season while wearing a soft cast that limits the use of her non-shooting arm.
One constant in the Marshall lineup is center Modupe Ishola (Washington, D.C.). The senior continues to lead C-USA in field goal percentage (58.2) after tallying her team-high 14th double-double of the season versus UCF with 13 points and 14 rebounds. She scored 12 points with seven boards in the Herd's January meeting with Southern Miss.
Southern Miss is led by sophomore Amber Eugene's 15.8 points per game. Classmate Kendra Reed nets 15.3 points per outing while senior point guard Kristin Chaney leads C-USA with 6.9 assists per game.
The Golden Eagles won three straight before falling to ECU at home on Thursday. Marshall is 0-1 at Reed Green Coliseum after last season's initial trip to the venue, a 67-63 USM victory.
The C-USA Championship bracket will be complete at the conclusion of Saturday night's SMU at UTEP battle in El Paso, Texas. Last season, MU secured the fifth seed and defeated Memphis in the first round before dropping a two-point decision to Southern Miss in the quarterfinals.
Saturday's game, Marshall's first road game to close out a season since the 2002-03 campaign, can be heard live on Marshall's student station, WMUL 88.1-FM, which will also utilize a web broadcast at www.marshall.edu/wmul.
