A rematch of last season’s Southwestern Athletic Conference women’s basketball championship game awaits the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff on Saturday.
UAPB will travel to Louisiana this weekend to face Southern at 3 p.m. Saturday, then Grambling State at 5:30 p.m. Monday.
UAPB (8-10, 3-2) fell 62-53 to Southern in the championship game of the SWAC tournament in Birmingham, Ala., last season despite defeating Southern 70-53 in Pine Bluff during the regular season.
Head coach Dawn Thornton said the loss in Birmingham is motivating the Lady Lions.
“When we were able to watch film, we watched some clips of some great things that we were able to do last year versus them,” Thornton said. “So, we brought that back up, but we don’t really want to focus on that. We’re such a different team now than we were last year. So are they, but I think that is something that’s inside that the girls just kind of know. They know.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Southern (5-11, 3-2) enters Saturday’s game tied with UAPB and two others for third place in the SWAC, so this is an important game regardless of recent history.
Both come into Saturday having lost two of their past three games. The Lady Lions are coming off Monday’s 73-70 loss to Bethune-Cookman, while the Lady Jaguars lost 69-45 at Grambling on Jan. 20.
UAPB forward Maori Davenport said the Lady Lions need to play with more discipline to get back on track.
“We didn’t really play as hard as we could,” Davenport said. “I don’t think we followed the game plan as well. The coaches give us enough information to know exactly what to do in certain moments of the game, and we just didn’t tap into it.”
Monday’s game may not have the same backstory, but it is just as important, if not more. Grambling (10-6, 4-1) sits alone in second place in the SWAC, having just defeated Southern.
The Lady Tigers are averaging a SWAC-best 78.6 points per game, with UAPB just behind at 77.6. Counting only conference games, UAPB ranks first, GSU third.
Although GSU is good offensively, Thornton said the Tigers’ defense stands out to her.
“Grambling plays a different level of defense that a lot of teams aren’t prepared for,” Thornton said. “It’s what Coach [Courtney] Simmons has done when she was at Troy, and she’s done a phenomenal job now of really instilling that mindset into Grambling, and so they defend at a high level. But watching that film when they played Southern, they didn’t miss shots. They flat-out shot the ball very, very well.”
These three teams collected some major non-conference wins for the SWAC. GSU struck first by defeating Arizona State at home. UAPB went on to defeat Arkansas in Fayetteville before Southern upset Oklahoma on the road.
Thornton said those wins were big for the SWAC.
“The [transfer] portal has leveled the playing field,” Thornton said. “You can’t underestimate your opponent, and you have to respect everybody. So, I think that now, coaches on the Power Five level, mid-major schools, I think they’re thinking twice about scheduling HBCUs.”