JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Looking to avoid falling back to .500 on the season, Carson-Newman gets home cooking to finish the 2019 calendar year starting with a Saturday matinee tilt against Coker from the friendly confines of Holt Fieldhouse at 2 p.m.
Coach Mike Mincey's team is coming off of two straight losses fourth time in the last three-plus years and second time this year. The program has not dropped three contests in a row since Feb. 13-20, 2016 when the Lady Eagles lost to Lenoir-Rhyne, Tusculum and Wingate.
The Lady Eagles are 1-2 to start South Atlantic Conference play for the second straight season as the unit went 14-3 down the stretch a year ago. The program has not started 1-3 in league action since 2010-11 when its record was 1-4 through the first five contests.
Saturday marks the 14th meeting between Carson-Newman (5-4, 1-2) and Coker (3-3, 1-2) as Mincey's crew has a commanding 11-2 lead with wins in each of the last eight outings. The average differential in that span has been just south of 30 points per game with a pair of 100-point efforts and seven with at least 80.
The club bounced back last Saturday after two straight losses beating Mars Hill at home 74-66. The trip to Mossy Creek will be just the third of the year for the Cobras who have lost both road outings this season. The team has now lost six straight road games dating back to a 74-65 win at Newberry on Jan. 23, 2019.
Albeit in a small sample size, Coker's team shooting percentage dips 12 points in road affairs to 31 percent while the club is 6-for-26 from long range in the two road trips. The one area that sees a sizeable increase in rebounding where it leaps from 31 per game to 46.
Coach Shannon Johnson's team ranks last in the conference in a multitude of areas including free-throw percentage it shoots 54 percent as a club, the seventh-lowest efficiency in the nation. That figure is in spite of the fact that the Cobras have attempted at least 15 foul shots in every game failing to convert better than 60 percent in all but two games.
Areas of strength for Coker include scoring defense where teams are posting 59 points per game the second-fewest yielding by the league and turnovers where it gives the ball away on average 17 times per night, good for fourth in the SAC.
Two players are posting double figures on a nightly basis led by 11.3 from Ashauntee Nelson who strokes it better from the field, 46, and three-point range, 47, than the free-throw line, 44. She has scored in double digits in four of her last five games.
Not far behind Nelson is Erin Houser who has three double-doubles on the year, the sixth-most in the SAC posting seven rebounds per night ranking 10th in the category. After making eight of her first 30 shots from the field, she is a 49 percent shooter in her last four games.
Broadcast coverage for Saturday afternoon's affair starts at 1:45 p.m. with "The AEC Countdown to Tip-Off" on the Eagle Sports Network's flagship station, 106.3 (WPFT-FM, Sevierville), and online with video and audio links on cneagles.com/live.
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