Rebels Conclude Road Schedule Thursday At Alabama

GAME 27: Ole Miss (15-11, 4-7) vs. Alabama (12-14, 0-11)
Thursday 02.19.09 | 6 p.m. CT
Tuscaloosa, Ala. | Coleman Coliseum (15,316)

MEDIA
Live Radio: (Gary Darby, play-by-play) Listen Online through RebelVision
Live Stats: OleMissSports.com

OXFORD, Miss. The Ole Miss women’s basketball team will play its final road game of the regular season Thursday night at 6 p.m. when the Rebels take on Alabama from Coleman Coliseum. 

Ole Miss (15-11, 4-7 SEC) will be searching for its second conference road win of the season after winning its first Feb. 8 at South Carolina.  Most recently, however, the Rebels fell on the road Sunday afternoon at Arkansas despite having three players in double figures.  Sophomore Kayla Melson scored a team-high 15 points to mark her highest scoring output since she tallied 14 points earlier this year at UCF.

Shawn Goff fell just one rebound shy of a double-double as she finished with 13 points, nine rebounds and two blocked shots.  She needs just two more rejections to become only the 15th player in SEC history to amass 200 or more career blocked shots.  Bianca Thomas also added 13 points for Ole Miss and hit two more three-pointers.  She now needs just six more treys to move into fourth place on the school’s single season list. 

Thomas leads Ole Miss on the offensive end by scoring 14.7 points per game to go along with 4.8 rebounds per game.  In addition, she is second in the SEC and 22nd in the nation in free throw percentage (.862) and sixth in the SEC in three-point percentage (.346).  Goff stands second on the team and seventh in the conference with 13.4 points per game.  She also ranks 16th in the league in rebounding (6.0 rpg) and second in blocked shots (2.2 bpg). 

Alabama (12-14, 0-11 SEC) enters Thursday’s game having lost its last 11 games.  The Crimson Tide opened the new year with a 59-48 win at Southeastern Louisiana Jan. 3 prior to the start of conference play, but the Crimson Tide has yet to win a league game.  In fact, Alabama has lost 24 straight SEC games over the past two seasons.  The Crimson Tide has not won a league game since defeating South Carolina 65-54 in last season’s SEC opener.  Most recently, Alabama lost 68-57 Sunday afternoon at South Carolina.  It was the fifth straight double digit loss for Alabama, and the ninth overall against SEC competition. 

Sophomore Tierney Jenkins leads the Crimson Tide in both scoring and rebounding.  Jenkins averages 11.3 points per game and 7.2 rebounds per game.  Mississippi native Dedrea Magee leads the team with 104 assists and averages 4.0 helpers per game.   

Ole Miss and Alabama will be meeting for the 48th time when the two teams tip-off Thursday night.  The Rebels own a 31-16 lead in the all-time series that dates back to the 1976-77 season.  Earlier this year, Ole Miss defeated the Crimson Tide 73-43 in a win that was the program’s 700th all-time victory. 

The Rebels have now won eight straight games in the series and have not lost to the Crimson Tide since 2004.  The eight-game winning streak is the longest such streak all-time against Alabama.  In addition, the Rebels have posted an average margin of victory of 22.0 points per game during the current winning streak. 

The Rebels are also 10-9 all-time against Alabama in games played in Tuscaloosa.  Ole Miss has won the last two meetings inside Coleman Coliseum and has not lost there since Jan. 15, 2004.  The Rebels have won the last two games in Coleman Coliseum by an average of 13.0 points per game.

The University of Mississippi Athletics

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