Jan. 18, 2008

McNeese State will attempt to bounce back into the win column on Saturday when the Cowboys travel to Nacogdoches, TX to take on Stephen F. Austin.

Gametime is 6 p.m. and all action can be listened to over Cajun radio 1470 A.M.

The Cowboys bowed to Sam Houston State 64-49 in their last outing while SFA nipped Lamar by an 81-75 score. McNeese is 7-7 overall and 1-1 in league play and SFA is 14-2 and 2-1 in the conference.

This will be the only meeting between the two schools this season as they play in different divisions of the conference.

The Cowboys will be attempting to get more firepower in Saturday's game. They had jumped off to a 14-2 lead over Sam Houston State and held a 22-20 lead at the half. The Bearkats, however, shut them down in the second half while outscoring them by 17 points.

McNeese coach Dave Simmons will probably make one change in his starting lineup for the game. He's expected to start freshman Stephan Martin in place of Rorey Lawrence at the second guard position.

Two games ago Martin came off the bench to score 16 points and lead the Cowboys to victory over TAM-Corpus Christi, making six of seven field goal attempts including going four for four from three point range. He only had four points in 15 minutes of playing time in the loss to Sam Houston.

Others in the starting lineup will be John Ford, Jarvis Bradley, Kleon Penn and John Pichon. Bradley, who was held to single scoring digits for only the third time this season by Sam Houston, leads the team in scoring with a 13.0 mark while Ford is tops in assists and steals and the 6-11 Penn leads in blocked shots and ranks seventh in the nation.

SFA has one of the league's top players in Josh Alexander who is averaging 16.4 points land 5.3 rebounds per game. Teammate Matt Kingsley is scoring at a 16.2 clip and has a 5.4 rebound average.

SFA's only losses this season have been to Texas Tech and to Nicholls State in overtime.