Kingsville - Sitting on just one overall loss and a perfect, 1-0, conference record five games into the season, the Kingsville women's basketball team is heading to San Antonio for the St. Mary's Thanksgiving Classic.
The team will have two matchups in as many days. First, they take on Oklahoma Baptist at 4 p.m. on Friday, then they cap the weekend against Shippensburg at 2 p.m on Saturday. In the program's history, Kingsville has never played Shippensburg, and has played OKB once, beating them 68-62 last season.
At 4-1, the Javelinas have started the season with their best record since 2015-16. Among many things keying the hot start, TAMUK has utilized a balanced scoring attack, with three different players - freshman guard
Logan Borchardt, junior forward
Shelby Ray, and senior forward
Janessa Payne - all averaging double-figures in the scoring department. Two others, senior guard
Abby Bala and junior guard
Aina Maynou, each add more than nine points.
Borchardt, the team's scoring and steals leader, is coming off of a career-high 21-point explosion in her first ever Conference game, helping the Javelinas take down TAMIU, 74-50, on Saturday.
"We are looking for consistency from all of our players day in and day out," Head Coach
Michael Madrid said. "Logan had a great game Saturday, her teammates found her and she capitalized on her opportunities."
TAMUK's first matchup of the weekend, OKB, comes into the game riding a three-game winning streak, fueled by the excellent play of graduate student guard Mackenzie Crusoe. She is averaging 18.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 2.5 steals per game.
On the season, the Bison maintain a 14.3-point scoring margin - the fourth-best in the Great American Conference. In the team's three-straight wins, however, that number has boosted to 23.6, including a 30-point win over a Lone Star Conference foe, Midwestern State. They also control the three-point line on both sides of the basketball. The Bison lead their conference in both most made three pointers per game offensively, and lowest opponent three-point percentage defensively.
"OBU has played some solid teams this season and is a veteran-led team," Madrid said. "They will be extremely well-coached and shoot threes at a high level from the top of their roster to the bottom of their roster. We are going to have to concentrate defensively on all their players, every possession and contest every shot to have success."
Kingsville's Saturday opponent, the Raiders, won their first game of the season before dropping three straight. Conference play started early for Shippensburg, who has already played two Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Road games - on the road against Seton Hall and Indiana University of Pennslvaynia.
"Shippensburg returns 10 players from last season that have a solid understanding of how to play and compete," Madrid said. "We anticipate them to execute well on both ends of the floor and be very competitive this weekend. We will have to play well on day two."
The games will be the Javelinas' final out-of-conference matchups before LSC play begins in earnest next weekend with a pair of games on the road against Angelo St. and UT Permian Basin.
