By Keanu Haghighi (@KeanuHaghighi ):
SJSU women’s basketball (7-22, 4-14 MW) is set to play its Mountain West Tournament opener against New Mexico (22-9, 10-8 MW) in Las Vegas.
Coming into the tournament the Spartans are ranked as the No.11 seed while the Lobos are No. 6.
The two teams split their season series, as each team won at home. The Spartans won on Jan. 6 by a score of 95-86, a game where at the time the Lobos were the best team in the conference in large part to Myzhanique Ladd’s 26 points.
However, when the both squads met again on Feb. 3 in a game where the Spartans were routed 92-62. An 11-0 run in the first quarter and a 14-0 run in the 2nd quarter was more than enough to put the Spartans away early in the first half.
If SJSU wants to pull off the upset, it needs to find a way to limit New Mexico’s center Jaisa Nunn. She has been a menace to deal with for the Spartans as she has been averaging 30.5 ppg and 10.5 rpg in both meetings this year.
On the other end, SJSU will lean on Ladd and point guard Taylor Turney to fill up the stat sheet. Both players lead the team with about 13 PPG. Ladd leads the Spartans in RPG (7.0) and Turney leads the team in APG (4.0).
In addition, a boost from the 3-point line by sophomore guard Analyss Benally will be crucial. She tops SJSU with 59 3-point field goals on the year and nailed five out of six three pointers when the Spartans defeated the Lobos at the Event Center in January.
Senior forward Hailey Gennett is also on milestone watch as she is 13 points away from becoming the 18th Spartan to score 1,000 career points.
Tip-off from Vegas is set for 7 p.m. at the Thomas & Mack Center.