TSU Basketball Teams To Host Senior Weekend Against Mississippi Valley State Saturday Afternoon

• TSU women’s basketball closes out its homestand with a match-up against Mississippi Valley State on Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. inside the H&PE Arena. The team will honor two seniors postgame in Ariana Taylor and Skye Green.
 
• Mississippi Valley State is the lone team TSU has defeated this season. TSU has won 18 of the past 19 against Mississippi Valley State dating back to 2012 as MVSU’s lone win came on Ja. 23, 2017.
 
• Andriana Avent and Micah Gray have combined to win SWAC Player of the Week five times this season. Avent has scored in double figures in eight straight games.
 
• 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 Monday against Mississippi Valley State.
 
• Micah Gray’s 33 against Central Florida was the fourth highest single-game performance in at least the last 12 years.
 
• Andriana Avent was named the SWAC Player of the Week on Nov. 30 after recording double-digits against Rice (22) and Ole Miss (13). She surpassed the 500-point career mark at TSU in the loss against Ole Miss.
 
• TSU head coach Vernette Skeete inherits a program which fined 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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• TSU prepares for its final homestand of the season as they’ll face Mississippi Valley State at 5 p.m. on Saturday inside the H&PE Arena.

• 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 locked in an eighth-place tie as only eight seeds are available for the upcoming SWAC Tournament.

• TSU dropped the first match-up this season to MVSU as it marked the end of a 10-game winning streak over the Delta Devils dating back to 1-23-17. TSU has won 18 of the past 20 games over MVSU.

• TSU’s Karl Nicholas joined the 1,000-point club last week. 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 91-78 all-time in the month of February and 23-8 at TSU.

• TSU will honor six seniors during pregame festivities in Karl Nicholas, Calen Holiday, John Walker III, Jordan Gilliam, Grayson Carter and Christopher Craig. • 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.