Albany State Lady Rams set to take on Stillman College

ALBANY — The Albany State Lady Rams will play Stillman in the SIAC Tournament quarterfinals tonight against the Stillman Lady Tigers, who defeated Clark 74-63 Tuesday night to earn a matchup against Albany State, the number two seed in the tournament.

Last game: Stillman won 66-65. At the time, both teams were in an early season slump. Stillman was 1-10 overall and 1-2 in the SIAC, while the Lady Rams were 1-8 on the season and 0-2 in the SIAC.

Since then: The Lady Rams have been gelling. They’re currently on a 10-game win streak dating back to mid-January. They finished the regular season 16-9 overall and 15-3 in the SIAC. Stillman has been playing around .500 ball, dropping their last two regular season games to Kentucky State and Lemoyne-Owen College. They enter tonight’s contest with an 11-16 overall record and 9-9 mark in the SIAC.

Keys to win: Turnovers. Albany State has come a long way from averaging 20-plus turnovers a game at the beginning of the season, but they’ve still made a few mistakes that could’ve been costly in the last few close games. The burden of ball protection will fall mainly on senior guard Mecca Frost, who has been averaging six assists per game but 5.4 turnovers as well.

Defense: Head coach Robert Skinner said his team has bought into the defensive scheme and it’s definitely played a large role in their win streak.

“We’ve put together a defensive philosophy that we pretty much just stuck with and gone with the remainder of the season and it’s been really good to us,” he said after their 78-55 win over Tuskegee in their regular-season finale.

Earlier this season he said the goal was to hold opponents to 59 points or less and they’ve achieved that goal in four of their last five games.

Bench Play: The Lady Rams have a lot of youth coming off of their bench, so getting them settled and in a rhythm early will be important for ASU.

Game time is 5:30 p.m. tonight at the Bill Harris Arena in Birmingham, Ala.