Basketball Teams To Face Alcorn State Live On HBCU GO Tonight

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

• TSU women’s basketball closes out its Mississippi trip with a match-up against Alcorn State at 5 p.m. on Monday night.

• TSU fell to Alcorn State at home in January in overtime.

• Andriana Avent and Micah Gray have combined to win SWAC Player of the Week five times this season.

• Micah Gray earned her second SWAC Player of the Week honor of her freshman campaign after setting a school-record 41-point performance against Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Jan. 7 then helping the Tigers earn their first win of the season with a 24-point, 5-rebound and 3-steal performance on Moday against Mississipi Valley State.

• TSU head coach Vernette Skeete is a 2005 graduate of Alcorn State and returns to The Reservation as a head coach for the first time.

• TSU head coach Vernette Skeete inherits a program which finished fourth in the SWAC last season and fell in the first round of the 2022 SWAC Tournament on a late putback. This year’s roster, which has been picked to finish eighth in the SWAC, is drastically different with nine newcomers and six returnees. Six of the nine newcomers are true freshmen.

• Andriana Avent is TSU’s lone All-SWAC returnee as she was a scoring machine for TSU during her first season. She averaged 18.1 points in 23 games played. Avent has scored in double figures in 24 consecutive games dating back to the non-conference finale at USC on Dec. 18, 2021. Avent had nine games with 20-plus points, including four with 30-plus including a season-high 35 against Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Jan. 8.

• TSU has faced off against teams from seven conferences in 2022-23. TSU will square off against teams from the American (2), Sun Belt (1), Conference USA (2), SEC (2), WAC (2), ACC and Pac-12.
 

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MEN’S BASKETBALL

• TSU closes out its Mississippi swing with an important contest at Alcorn State Monday night live on  HBCU GO.

• The injury bug infected TSU during the first half in a big way as the team was down two key starters in every SWAC game until Jan. 16. TSU has slowly recovered since having everyone back and are now locked in a seventh-place tie with Bethune-Cookman as only eight seeds are available for the upcoming SWAC Tournament. With only two games left, TSU needs to keep winning as four games separates teams 3-10 as TSU has not missed a SWAC Tournament appearance since 2013.

• TSU’s 25-game win streak over ASU came to an end in January of 2020 as ASU started a two-game streak in 2020. TSU broke the streak in 2021 with two wins but ASU swept the season series in 2022 as both games came down to the wire before TSU won the 2022 SWAC Tournament Championship. ASU won the opener in overtime this past season.

• Head coach Johnny Jones is 5-5 lifetime against Alcorn State and 3-3 against ASU’s Landon Bussie.

• TSU’s Karl Nicholas joined the 1,000-point club in early February. He’s the second Tiger on the team (John Walker III) to have surpassed the mark this season.

• This marks the fifth year for TSU head coach Johnny Jones. TSU made its third consecutive postseason under Jones and second straight NCAA Tournament appearance in 2021-22.  Jones went 24-14 in his inaugural year as head coach with three Power 5 conference wins. TSU fell in the finals of the 2019 SWAC Tournament and advanced to the semifinals of the CIT in 2019. In 2019-20, the Tigers made it back to the semifinals of the SWAC Tournament after a third-place regular season finish but saw the season end abruptly due to COVID-19. TSU won the SWAC Tournament and First Four contest in 2021 and was the first SWAC team to beat a ranked opponent from the SEC in 2021 at Florida. 

• TSU has faced off against teams from nine Division I conferences in 2022-23. TSU squares off against teams from the WCC, Big 12 (2), Pac-12, Summit, SoCon, American, SEC, Big South and CAA. TSU also hosted a pair of NAIA institutions in December.

• For the first time since 2002, TSU spent a considerable amount of time at home during non-conference play with four home games during its 2022-23 non-conference schedule.

• Jones is 93-79 all-time in the month of February and 25-9 at TSU.

• For the third straight season, the Texas Southern men’s basketball team was picked to finish first in the Southwestern Athletic Conference while the duo of Karl Nicholas and John Walker III both earned preseason honors. Nicholas was tabbed the SWAC’s Preseason Defensive Player of the Year.