Well today is the day, its time for the Delaware State Men's and Women's basketball team to showcase their skills during the 2013 Mid Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) tournament here in the Norfolk Scope Arena in Norfolk, Virginia. This morning at 11am the the ninth seed DSU lady hornets will play in the 1st round for the fourth straight year as they take on the number eight seed Bethune-Cookman.
In their 1st and only meeting of the season at Daytona Beach, Florida, the lady hornets blew a nine point lead but prevail in overtime 62-57 in overtime back on January 26 thanks to Jade Washington's game winning lay up with 34 seconds left and Taisha Bristow's four clutch free throws.
The lady hornets finished ninth in the MEAC at 6-10 in Tamika Louis' first year as Delaware State. She knows that her team will have their hands full especially after growing pains the Lady Hornets went through this season. Now the Lady Hornets will have dig deep in order to get to the quarter-finals to face Hampton with their best offense they can.
Think about it the lady hornets are ninth in the MEAC in scoring but their turnovers is hard to watch everytime they play by averaging almost 21 turnovers a game. Also their defense has been pretty rough this season finishing third to last in the MEAC in scoring defense. Ever heard of hands up defense? Tierra hawkins and Bristow is going to need a third and fourth scorer in order to help DSU and that has to be Deanna Harmon and Keyanna Tate.
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As for the DSU men's basketball team, they play a night cap as the sixth seed when they play the 11th seed Howard University.
Howard is still having nightmares after getting swept in the season series but the biggest nightmare came back on January 23 when Tahj Tate made two highlighted poster dunks that had Hornet fans going crazy. Howard will never forget and never forgive what happen on that very day. Expect the Bison to give the Hornets a fight like no other and I'm pretty sure Alphonso Leary has a defensive mind set on Tate after being on the wrong end of a poster dunk.
The Hornet men better take Howard lightly, (remember UMES and South Carolina?) or else they will be in for early elimination.
I'm pretty sure coach Greg Jackson Sr. has some new ideas on how the Hornets run this offense because trust me the slow down game will not work with Howard or any other team in the tournament if they advance that far. Also the Hornets biggest weakness is their three point shooting especially when they shoot 27% as a team during the regular season. The hornets has got to attack the paint more due to the fact that other MEAC opponents are turning DSU into a jump shooting team with no balanced scoring due to their opponents height. So what that means is this, Tate has to step up (sixth man or not), Casey Walker has to step up, Maques Oliver has to step up, Kendall Gray has to step up, Miles Bowman, has to step and the point guard of A.J. Thomas, Jabari Joyner, Khali Thomas, and Amere May has to play point guard not shooting guard in order for Delaware State to move to the quarterfinals. The winner of this game will play the third seed Hampton on Thursday night.
Good luck Delaware State, even though I won't be there in Norfolk to support in person, rest assured I will wear my Columbia blue and red today in Newark, Delaware to watch the game online on meachoops.com.
