WICHITA FALLS, Texas -- Midwestern State plays the annual Ovarian Cancer Awareness Game on Saturday afternoon as Western New Mexico visits D.L. Ligon Coliseum for a 1 p.m. tipoff.

"We will be raising awareness, not just for ovarian cancer, but also for our former coach Noel Johnson, who coached here and was the winningest coach in MSU history. She did a lot of great things for the Mustangs and the MSU community — really the Wichita Falls community as a whole," Midwestern State head coach Brenita Jackson said. "We just want to honor her and then any other cancers that affect women, we just want to raise awareness because it's a fight, and we want everyone that's battling to know that we support them and we're praying for them."

Midwestern State (5-17, 5-11) won its first meeting with Western New Mexico in Silver City last month, 73-61, as the Mustangs hit 6-of-11 3-pointers and outrebounded WNMU, 39-28. MSU broke open a close game by beating the WNMU press in the third quarter.

"We got on the glass, we finished, we shot pretty well. We handled their press, and we need that same focus and execution on Saturday," Jackson said. "We're still in the fight. We're still in the hunt, trying to get into the conference tournament, and this is a winnable game on Saturday."

Midwestern State is a game behind Texas A&M-Kingsville, Cameron and Arkansas-Fort Smith, which are all battling for the eighth and final spot in the Lone Star Conference Postseason Tournament.

Midwestern State is coming off a 65-60 loss to Eastern New Mexico on Thursday night. The Mustangs held the Greyhounds to six points in the third quarter and took an eight-point lead, but six turnovers hurt MSU in the fourth quarter as ENMU rallied for the victory.

"We went through a stretch there in the fourth quarter where we were missing shots and turning the ball over. We just didn't play the same way we did in the third quarter, which was really good," Jackson said.

The Mustangs are scoring 65.4 points per game this season, and opponents are scoring 75.9 points per game against MSU.

Carter is leading Midwestern State and is fourth in the Lone Star Conference with 16.5 points per game, and she is the leading rebounder in the conference with 10.7 rebounds per game. The 6-1 junior from Mansfield, Texas, has posted 10 double-doubles this season. Only Ashley Ingram of Texas Woman's has more in the LSC with 12 this season. Carter posted a double-double in Silver City on Jan. 11, scoring 25 points and grabbing 16 rebounds in the first meeting with Western New Mexico.

Amos is the ninth-leading scorer in the LSC with 14.5 points per game, and she sits 17th in the conference with 6.3 rebounds per game. The 5-9 swingman is ninth in the conference with two steals per game.

Makayla Coy, who is scoring 9.4 points per game for the Mustangs, is the ninth-leading rebounder in the conference with 7.5 boards per game. Coy scored a career-high 33 points against Tampa earlier this season. The 5-11 senior has five double-doubles this season, including 16 points and 10 rebounds at West Texas A&M. Coy hit the game-winning shot in a 76-74 victory at Oklahoma Christian with 15 seconds remaining.

Catalina Cortez has the best assist-to-turnover ratio in the LSC at 2.38 and leads the Mustangs with 2.8 assists per game. Cortez is playing 31.1 minutes a game. The 5-2 sophomore was forced out of the game on Thursday due to injury. She had a hit a 3-pointer in 11 consecutive games, but that streak came to a halt in the loss to ENMU.

Nikki Green is the third-leading scorer for Midwestern State with 10.2 points per game. Green is 34 of 110 from 3-point range (.309) this season. The 5-6 junior from Dallas (Richardson HS) hit five 3-pointers in a game for the second time this season on Thursday night, and she has scored 20 or more points three times during the campaign. Green played a season-high 33 minutes against Eastern New Mexico and shot 60 percent from the field en route to a career-high 29 points.

Midwestern State is the second-best rebounding team in the LSC with 38.7 rebounds per game. The Mustangs lead the conference and are 26th among NCAA Division II programs with 15 offensive rebounds per game.

Carter is hitting 80.7 percent of her free throws, which ranks fifth in the league, and she has attempted the fifth-most free throws in the LSC with 114. As a team, MSU is shooting 19.6 free throws per game, which is fifth-most in the conference, and has the ninth-best free-throw percentage at 72.2.

The Mustangs have the second-fewest turnovers in the LSC with 14 per game and are ninth in the league with a 0.74 assists-to-turnover ratio. MSU forces 14.9 turnovers and the plus-0.95 turnover margin is eighth-best in the conference.

Midwestern State leads the all-time series with WNMU, 13-5, and has won six of the eight meetings at D.L. Ligon Coliseum. The Western Mustangs won their last visit, 53-47, scoring 20 points off 18 turnovers and outrebounding MSU, 38-31. Sydney Wright scored 13 points on 5-of-11 shooting in the victory last season.

Western New Mexico (8-14, 3-12) is 2-8 on the road this season and has a four-game losing streak following a 68-54 loss at Cameron, which was the first game of a four-game road trip for the Western Mustangs.

WNMU is the second-lowest scoring team in the LSC with 57.9 points per game, and the Western Mustangs allow opponents to score 65.2 points per game.

Western New Mexico has the third-most productive bench in the LSC with 23.9 points per game.

Wright, a 5-5 senior guard from Houston, is the leading scorer for WNMU with 11.8 points per game, and she is the only Western Mustang averaging double figures. Wright is the only player that has started all 20 games for Western New Mexico. She also leads the team with 2.75 assists per game.

Diamond Moore, a 5-9 forward from Colorado Springs, is the leading rebounder at WNMU with 6.9 boards per game.

WNMU is 13th in the league with 33.73 rebounds per game.

Eliza Joynes, a 6-3 center from Adelaide, Australia, has 26 blocks and is fourth in the league with 1.18 blocks per game.

The Western Mustangs are turning the ball 17.4 times per game, which is 12th in the LSC, and WNMU forces the second-fewest turnovers in the league with 14.32 per game. The minus-3.05 turnover margin is the second-highest in the conference.

Josh Pace is in his fourth season at the helm of the WNMU program and is 25-50 (.333). Pace won an NCAA championship as a player at Syracuse in 2003 under head coach Jim Boeheim and played professionally both abroad and in the U.S. for 10 years.

As a starter in the 2004 and 2005 seasons, Pace averaged better than 10 points and five rebounds per game for Syracuse. He earned All-Big East honorable mention and was named to the Big East All-Tournament team as a senior, as well as garnering the Big East Sportsmanship Award.

Brenita Jackson is in her first season leading Midwestern State and boasts a career record of 57-30 (.655) after two highly successful campaigns at Texas Wesleyan, where she won 80 percent of her games (52-13). Jackson coached junior college basketball for five seasons. She was 69-78 at Lon Morris, Cisco and San Jacinto combined. Jackson led the Ravens to a 23-7 record in her second season at San Jacinto after the team went 3-25 in the 2013-14 campaign.

Midwestern State travels to Odessa for a rematch with UT Permian Basin on Thursday night at the UTPB Gym Complex. Tipoff is scheduled for 5:30 p.m.
 

--MSUMustangs.com--