East Carolina Heads to Tulane in Search of Season Split
January 30, 2015 | Women's Basketball
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GREENVILLE, N.C. - East Carolina will play its fifth road game in its last seven contests when it heads to New Orleans to close out the month of January and take on Tulane on Saturday, Jan. 31 in American Athletic Conference action. Opening tip is scheduled for 3 p.m. (EST) at Devlin Fieldhouse.
The Pirates have won three of the last five overall meetings between the two programs, but the Green Wave owns a 13-5 lead in the all-time series and escaped with a 76-63 victory in Greenville on Jan. 7. Junior forward I'Tiana Taylor put up huge numbers in that matchup, scoring a game-high 23 points and grabbing a career-best 19 rebounds in her fourth of six double-doubles this season, while redshirt senior Abria Trice notched her first-career double-double with 10 points and 11 boards. Taylor's 19 rebounds also placed her in a tie for the eighth most in a single game in program history.
The Wave had four players reach double-figure scoring, led by Kolby Morgan's 15 points and four steals, Jamie Kaplan's 14 points and nine assists and Chinwe Duru's 13 points and nine rebounds, as Danielle Blagg contributed 12 points.
East Carolina (13-8, 4-6 AAC) is coming off an 87-32 road loss at No. 2 UConn on Wednesday night and it led by redshirt junior Jada Payne's 17 points per game, while Taylor is averaging a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds, and ranks second on the team with 1.7 steals. Payne leads the conference with a 92.3-percent clip at the free throw line and fifth in three-point field goal percentage (.435), while senior point guard Janesha Ebron is second in assists per game with 4.6.
Tulane (16-4, 7-2 AAC) is led by Morgan's 12.2 points and 5.1 rebounds, while Blagg is also averaging double-digit points per contest with 10.1. Tiffany Dale is the team's top rebounder with 5.8 per game, as Kaplan is fourth in The American in assists. The Green Wave uses a balanced attack on offense and ranks second in the league in scoring defense, surrendering just 54 points per game to opponents and allowing just 34.9-percent of shots to fall.
PAYNE CLOSING IN ON 1,000 POINTS
Redshirt junior wing player Jada Payne has scored 927 points in just 52-career games at East Carolina and, with 73 more, will become just the 22nd player in program history to eclipse 1,000. Allison Spivey (2007-11) was the last to break the threshold and ranks 20th all-time with 1,043.
MACY COLLECTS CAREER WIN NO. 200
Head coach Heather Macy, in her 10th season as a head coach and fifth at ECU, earned her 200th-career victory as a head coach in the Pirates' 67-49 road win at SMU on Jan. 24. It was also her 85th tally in the win column at the helm of the East Carolina program.
EBRON CLIMBING ALL-TIME ASSISTS LIST
Senior point guard Janesha Ebron cracked the top 10 of the program's all-time assists list with five in the win at Tulsa on Jan. 14. She passed Delphine Mabry (1982-87) who had 291 for her career, and with five more dimes in the win at SMU on Jan. 21, became the 10th player to record 300 in a career. The Winterville native currently has 313 assists and is just 13 behind Justine Allpress (1993-97) for ninth place in program history and 32 away from Irish Hamilton (1986-90) in eighth place.
all over the O-boards
East Carolina has pulled down 20 or more offensive rebounds in eight different games this season. The Pirates currently rank 13th among all NCAA Division I programs with an average of more than 17 per game, and have matched or exceeded that amount 10 times on the year.
PICKING POCKETS
As of Wednesday, Jan. 26, the Pirates rank among the top 15 NCAA Division I teams with an average of 11.7 steals per game. They totaled 21 steals in the season-opening win over Fairfield, and have recorded 12 or more in 11 of 21 games this season.
PRESSURING THE ROCK
Defensively, ECU has used its defensive pressure on the ball to create turnovers and transition runs. East Carolina has forced opponents into an average of 22 turnovers per game and have generated 20 or more in six of the last 11 contests and 12 of 21 overall.
TOP SWAT TEAM
ECU currently sits in seventh place for the most blocks per game (6.6) among NCAA Division I teams. East Carolina rejected 10 or more shots in three-straight games in December, a streak that began with 15 blocked shots in the 82-33 win at Loyola Maryland on Dec. 9, and matched the program record initially set on Jan. 18, 1975 against Elon.
