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ARKADELPHIA, Ark. – Less than 72 hours removed from facing Southern Nazarene in Arkadelphia in a rescheduled game from Jan. 1, the Henderson State women will travel to Bethany, Oklahoma, to face the Crimson Storm in the Sawyer Center Thursday, Jan. 27 at 5:30 p.m.
 
REDDIES REPORT
In a battle of one of the league's top offensive teams in HSU against the league's top defensive teams in SNU, the Crimson Storm's defense prevailed, defeating Henderson, 66-62. An HSU team that is scoring an average of 80+ points per game was held to its lowest point total of the season Monday evening.
 
Maci Mains led the Reddies in scoring with 12 points on 5-of-11 shooting, including 2-2 from beyond-the-arc, while Gracie Raby logged another strong rebounding performance with a team-high 10 boards. For the second game in a row, Ashley Farrar was held to single digits as her season average is now 17.4 points per game.
 
The usual high-powered offense of Henderson has been held below 80 points in four straight games, and has only scored north of 75 points once in that span. The brief lull in scoring has the Reddies third in the GAC with 82.2 points per game. Henderson still leads the conference with a 44.2 field-goal percentage.
 
Henderson St. and Southern Nazarene are now neck-and-neck in the GAC standings, with the Reddies sitting in fourth at 7-5 while the Crimson Storm are in fifth with the same record. Following HSU and SNU are Arkansas Tech, Northwestern Oklahoma St. and Oklahoma Baptist, who are each 6-6 in league play.
 
For HSU to see a different outcome on Thursday than it did on Monday, it will have to figure out how to maneuver around the dominant presence of Abby Niehues, who had an eye-popping nine blocks. Niehues was one rejection away from the unprecedented points-rebounds-blocks triple-double with 10 points, 14 rebounds and nine blocks.
 
SCOUTING SOUTHERN NAZARENE
Southern Nazarene came to the Duke Wells Center on Thursday with its league-best defense on full display, building an 11-point lead after the first quarter that it would never relent. Holding the Reddies to 23.1% shooting through the first 10 minutes, during which SNU's offense made 53.3% of its shots, was all the cushion Southern Nazarene needed to come away with the win.
 
The Crimson Storm benefitted greatly on the evening by going to the line 39 times, capitalizing on 19 of the freebies. Both Cassandra Awatt and Kennedy Gillette scored five of their 17 and nine points, respectively, at the charity stripe. Henderson, on the other hand, only went to the line nine times.
 
Southern Nazarene is 5-2 at home this season, with its only two losses inside the Sawyer Center coming against Arkansas Tech and Oklahoma Baptist. Both ATU and OKBU were able to get a large part of their offense from outside the perimeter as each shot north of 45% from three, with Tech shooting 60%. In home conference games SNU has won, opponents have shot worse than 28% from deep.
 
What To Watch For…
-In head coach Jill Thomas' nine years at Henderson State, she has only lost both regular season matchups against Southern Nazarene once (2018-19). That year, HSU finished 18-11 overall and 13-9 in conference, making the GAC Tournament as the fifth seed.
 
-Lani Snowden currently has 196 career made three-pointers. With four more, Snowden will join Haleigh Henson (293) and Hailey Estes (288) as the only players in program history to make 200 career threes.
 
-Karrington Whaley now has the third most rebounds in program history with 747. With 10 games remaining, Whaley needs to average 5.4 rebounds per game the rest of the way to pass Dulincia Keener (800) for second on the career rebounds list.