Tulane Welcomes South Florida to Uptown for Regular-Season Finale
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The women’s basketball regular season comes to a close tomorrow afternoon with South Florida coming to Avron B. Fogelman Arena in the Devlin Fieldhouse for a tilt with Tulane at 2:00 p.m. The contest will stream on ESPN+ and can be heard on WRBH 88.3 FM.
The Green Wave and Bulls have met 54 times before with South Florida leading the series 34-20. The Bulls have won each of the last six match-ups and 25 of the last 26, including an 85-53 victory earlier this season in Tampa on February 7, exactly one month prior to this contest. Tulane’s last win over USF was a 67-55 victory in Tampa on February 6, 2022. Tulane is 9-14 all-time at home against the Bulls and has lost 13 in a row in New Orleans to USF. The Wave last won at home in the series on January 12, 2001, by a score of 67-38.
South Florida One of the Best
The Bulls are 19-11 on the season and 12-5 in the American Conference. USF has won three games in a row and bested Temple 82-36 on Tuesday. The Bulls last lost to the American regular-season champion Rice on February 17. USF boasts a scoring offense of 71.5 with a shooting clip of 44.2 percent overall and 31.3 percent beyond the arc. The Bulls secure 40.5 rebounds per game while averaging 16.2 assists and 6.2 steals. Edyn Battle is the team’s leading scorer at 14.8 points per game with Carla Brito leading on the glass with an average of 9.3. Stefanie Ingram leads USF in both assists (5.8) and steals (1.4).
Last Time Out
Tulane is 11-18 with a 6-11 conference clip this season. The Wave suffered a hard-fought 61-57 loss at Florida Atlantic last time out on Tuesday. Tulane touts a scoring offense of 65.1 with a 39.9 field goal percentage. The Wave is sixth in the conference for rebounding at 38.9 while ranking fifth in assists at 14.2. Tulane remains one of the top shot-blocking teams in the league with an average of 3.8, fourth in the American. Kanija Daniel tops the team in scoring at 11.8 points per game. Dyllan Hanna is the team leader and 10th in the conference with 7.1 rebounds per game. Kendall Sneed has 4.0 helpers per game, sixth in the conference. Hanna and Daniel are the best blocking duo in the conference as they rank third (1.4) and fifth (1.0) in the league, making Tulane the only team in the American with two players in the top five for blocking.
Mabry #24 on the Charts with a Bullet (as the old Billboard magazine used to say)
Amira Mabry continued to climb up Tulane’s all-time scoring list. She currently ranks 24th with 1,065 career points and needs just 11 more to move solely into 23rd. CC Mays is looking reach the 1,000 points threshold as well, owning 994 points and needing just six more to reach the marker.
Mabry also ranks in the top 10 of the program’s record book for field goal percentage with a career mark of 50.9 percent. The four-year Wave senior is 10th in program history. Though spending only two seasons in Uptown, Hanna has cemented herself as one of the best shot blockers in program history. With a rate of 1.4 per game across her Tulane career, Hanna is currently fifth on the all-time leaderboard.
Wave D is One of the Best
Tulane continues to be one of the best defensive teams in the league throughout conference play. The Wave boasts a scoring defense of 62.8 in league action, fifth best in the American. Tulane tallies the second-best field goal percentage defense at 37.8 percent, but the Wave is even better at guarding the perimeter. In league action, Tulane allows opponents to shoot just 25.7 percent beyond the arc, the lowest mark in the conference.
Conference Tourney Begins Tuesday
Next up is the American Conference Championship, hosted in Birmingham, Alabama, at Legacy Arena at the BJCC. The tournament begins on Tuesday, March 10, with the first round of action. The event continues through the week until the championship game on Saturday, March 14.
Portions Courtesy Tulane Athletics
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.