COMMERCE– The Texas A&M University-Commerce women's basketball team will begin the second half of their Lone Star Conference season with two games this weekend. The Lions host Midwestern State on Thursday and Cameron on Saturday.
 
Midwestern State
WHO: Texas A&M-Commerce (13-5, 9-1 LSC) vs. Midwestern State (10-6, 7-3 LSC)
WHERE: The Field House in Commerce, Texas
WHEN: Thursday, Jan. 25 at 5:30 p.m.
LIVE STATS: Click HERE
LIVE VIDEO: lionathletics.com/live
TICKETS: Click HERE
 
Cameron
WHO: Texas A&M-Commerce vs. Cameron (7-11, 5-5 LSC)
WHERE: The Field House in Commerce, Texas
WHEN: Saturday, Jan. 27 at 2 p.m.
LIVE STATS: Click HERE
LIVE VIDEO: lionathletics.com/live
TICKETS: Click HERE
 
The Lions are coming off three wins in the last five days, including two conference road wins. A&M-Commerce defeated UT Permian Basin in overtime on Thursday before beating West Texas A&M on the road for the first time in 13 years. Head coach Jason Burton was proud of his team for fighting through adversity in both games and keeping the Lions in first place in the conference standings.
 
"Playing well on the road is not easy to do, especially in this league," he said. "To go into Permian Basin, I thought it could have been easy to overlook them and look ahead to Saturday's game. But I thought our girls did a really good job of staying focused against UT Permian Basin because they are a good team. They play differently than any other team in our conference. They took us to overtime. I thought our girls did a good job of staying locked in to the opponent that was in front of them. They didn't look ahead. I think all year we have done a good job of being locked into that next game. I'm proud of that win in overtime because Permian Basin is a tough place to play.
 
"Then you go over to West Texas shorthanded, without Artaejah Gay, and we really had to have people step up. I thought Jenna Price locked in. She took five charges. I thought she should have been Defensive Player of the Week because of how well she played that whole trip. She took three charges against Permian Basin and five on Saturday. She really played well defensively. I thought collectively as a team, our team stepped up and answered the call on Saturday against West Texas. That's a tough place to play and to go and get a win for the first time since 2005 over there, that is huge for our program."
 
For her efforts last week, Brianna Wise was named the Lone Star Conference Offensive Player of the Week. Burton knows he has a star player in Wise, not only because of her offensive ability, but also her work on the defensive end and the boards.
 
"She is playing incredible," Burton said of Wise. "I try not to tell her that too often– I try to keep her humble. But she is a special player. She really is. She is able to affect the game on both ends of the floor. We ask a lot of her. We ask her to score and she scores in bunches. I ask her to make her teammates better and give other players the ball. And on the other end, a lot of times she is guarding the best player on the other team. If you look at the West Texas game, she is our leading scorer but at the same time I am asking her to guard Lexy Hightower and to make it difficult on her. That is a tough task because Lexy is really good. We are asking her to guard the best player and to turn around and be the leading scorer in the conference, she is doing so much.
 
"She has also been rebounding the ball well as of late. If you go back and look at her stats, she had a double-double on Monday and had nine rebounds the last three or four games. She is doing a whole lot right now. Sometimes you overlook how well she plays defensively, how well she rebounds the ball and how well she does the little things for us. I'm really proud of her this year and we need her to continue to play how she is playing because she is a big reason why we won without Artaejah Gay on Saturday. She is a big reason why we are winning this year."
 
The Lions are halfway through their conference season and are in first place with a two-game lead in the standings. After playing against every team in the league, Burton reaffirmed what he said at the beginning of the year: that the Lone Star Conference is one of the best conferences in Division II.
 
"There are so many talented teams," he said. "You look at the teams that haven't won as many games in the first half of conference, I still think there are a lot of teams that have a chance to really switch up the order. There are teams that aren't in the top eight that are looking to make the conference tournament. There is a three-way tie for second place right now with Tarleton State right outside of that. Everybody is competing for that top spot. I am very interested to see how it all plays out because on any given night, I really think anybody can beat anybody."
 
Burton likes what his team has done so far, but knows there is a long way to go with 10 more games still on the schedule.
 
"Fortunately, we have put ourselves in a really good position to be at the top right now but we can't get complacent," he said. "We can't get comfortable where we are because now that we are at the top, it puts a target on us. We have to make sure that we are focused."
 
The Lions now host Midwestern State on Thursday, the lone team to defeat the Lions in the first half of the season. Burton feels like the Lions let that game slip away with some uncharacteristic mistakes and missed free throws. He also knows the Mustangs will come in prepared and ready to play.
 
"Midwestern is a big game for us on Thursday," he said. "They are the only team to beat us in the first half of the season and we really feel like, had we shot the ball better from the free throw line in that game, we would have won the game. We missed nine free throws, which is uncharacteristic of us. We know they are going to come in hungry and wanting to get back up in the standings and get back in first place. We have to make sure we continue to take it one game at a time and focus on the team we are about to play and take care of business."
 
Looking ahead to a five-game road trip after this week, with the two longest road trips in the LSC, Burton knows these two games at home will be crucial.
 
"It is so important to protect home court, because it is tough to get wins on the road in this league," he said. "You look at this stretch that we are about to go on, we have our two longest road trips back-to-back. We are going out to New Mexico next week and that is a trip where we are going to be gone Wednesday to Sunday. Then we have to turn around and leave for Kingsville and Angelo the next Wednesday. Then we get back from that trip and then on Tuesday we have a short turnaround going to Tarleton. Then even though we are at home, we have another short turnaround with Texas Woman's on Thursday. We really have to protect our home court these next two games because our next six games after that are going to be really tough."