Women’s Basketball Prepares For SWAC Home Opener Saturday Evening

• Texas Southern women’s basketball returns to the court looking for their second straight win as they’ll host Grambling State Saturday evening inside the H&PE Arena at 5:30 p.m.

• Third-year head coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke is back on the TSU sidelines for the second straight season. She led TSU to the SWAC Regular Season Championship for the first time in school history in 2012-13 in addition to a second-place finish last season. The team made it to the semifinals of the SWAC Tournament as the No. 2 seed but the season was cut short due to COVID-19.

• Head coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke is 72-40 all-time in the month of January and 15-2
at TSU.

• Cooper-Dyke is 16-1 all-time against Grambling State. She defeated GSU in both games last season.

• Senior Ataiya Bridges is having a career year as she leads the SWAC with 24 ppg.
• Texas Southern women’s basketball was picked to finish second in the annual Southwestern Athletic Conference poll while the duo of Niya Mitchell and Ataiya Bridges earned preseason All-SWAC honors as the league announced its annual preseason poll and all-conference teams. 

• Grambling State is 2-4 overall and 1-1 in SWAC play. Like TSU, GSU lost its first two SWAC games due to COVID-19 but returned to the court for the first time in SWAC play last weekend and split its first two games with a  67-64 win versus Southern and a 61-58 loss against Alcorn State. Candace Parramore leads GSU with 11.7 points while Ariel Williams averages 5.5 rebounds. Alexus Holt follows with 11.2 points and three rebounds per game.

• TSU returns eight letterwinners and adds four newcomers in 2020-21. However, TSU has to replace four starters as only Niya Mitchell returns.