SAN ANGELO – The Angelo State women's basketball team, coming off a first-round bye in this week's Lone Star Conference Tournament, look to make a run in postseason play, needing three wins in the conference tournament to win the tournament and give themselves an automatic berth to the NCAA Regional.
The Rambelles are coming off a 15-12 regular season that saw them start the season 0-8, but since December 11th, the Rambelles are 15-4 overall and 12-4 in conference play. Originally picked 15th in the LSC Preseason Poll, they are the fourth seed in the LSC Tournament.
They are looking for their first tournament win since March 3rd, 2020, when they defeated Midwestern State inside the Junell Center. They have not won in the tournament quarterfinals since 2019, when they won in both the quarterfinals and semifinals that season.
The Rambelles boast the conference's fourth-best scoring offense with 68.5 points per game and shoot 40.6 percent from the field, sixth in the conference.
The Rambelles are also fifth in rebounding with 39.2 boards per contest and are second in assist/turnover ratio with a 1.10 assist/turnover ratio.
Four of the five Rambelles in the starting lineup average 10 or more points per game, led by Blakely Gerber's 12 points per game. The sophomore is shooting 40.6 percent from the field and 77.6 percent from the free throw line, having shot a team-high 107 attempts from the charity stripe this season.
Sawyer Lloyd, averaging 11.8 points per game, has four games this season with 20 or more points, including scoring 27 points on 11-of-14 shooting against #4 Texas A&M-Commerce last Thursday. The Wall native is eighth in assists with 3.8 per game and is fifth with 2.4 steals per contest.
Payton Brown is second in the LSC with 35.3 minutes played per contest; she leads the conference in total minutes played with 953 minutes on the court this season. She averages 11.3 points per game and is second in the league with 4.4 assists per game.
Tayjanna McGhee-Pleasant scores 10.6 points per game while Madeline Stephens adds 9.4 per game as well as a team-best 7.6 rebounds per game. Stephens is ninth in the conference in rebounding while McGhee-Pleasant's 6.7 rebounds per game is 15th in the LSC.
The Rambelles have also relied on Ashlynn Sharp and Samantha Rocha off the bench this season, with the senior Sharp shooting 38.5 percent from three-point range, best on the team.
Their matchup, the last game of the day on Friday with an 8:30 p.m. tip-off time, will come against fifth-seeded Lubbock Christian. The defending national champions finished 12-4 in conference play and beat UAFS on Tuesday in the first round of the tournament in Lubbock.
In their matchup earlier this season, the Rambelles defeated the 8th-ranked team in the country 67-63 behind 14 points from Gerber and a 13-point, 10-rebound double-double from Brown.
