Crunk on tear
Freshman guard Jordyne Crunk is averaging 9 points per game in January; in fact, excluding the Jan. 6 win against Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, in which she scored only one point, Crunk is averaging nearly 11 points per game.
Head coach Brady Sallee said of Crunk, after she scored 12 points against Morehead State Jan. 15 that the coaches like where she is in her game right now.
Crunk said after the Morehead State game she is starting to get used to her role as a player off of the bench.
Sallee said Crunk and assistant head coach Lee Buchanan have been working on her shooting stroke a lot in practices.
In the month of January, Crunk is shooting 42 percent from beyond the three-point line; however, excluding the first two games of January, Crunk is shooting 54 percent.
Crunk’s month of January is similar to the impressive month of February that sophomore forward Sydney Mitchell had last season.
Mitchell averaged 10.3 points per game in February last season. She also averaged 85 percent from the free throw line.
Including February, Mitchell was only averaging 5.7 points per game last season at the time that her scoring numbers started to increase.
Crunk is averaging 5.7 points per game this season. She is averaging 8.3 points per game in games against Ohio Valley Conference foes, fifth on the team.
In five of eight February games last season, Mitchell was among the team’s top three scorers.
In January, Crunk has only been among the team’s top three scorers two of six times; however, she has set a career-high in points in a game twice. There are still two games left in January.
Wyss heats up from three
Sophomore guard Kelsey Wyss hit a career-high five three pointers in Saturday’s loss to Tennessee-Martin.
She scored a total of 17 points, scoring 15 of them from three-point land. Wyss was the team’s third highest scorer in the game.
Wyss hit five of the team’s seven three pointers and attempted nine of the team’s 16 total.
Around the OVC
There are only three teams in the OVC with winning overall records. There are only five teams with winning conference records.
Eastern is the fifth team with a winning conference record, one win over .500, at 5-4. However, Eastern is one of the eight OVC teams with a losing record at 9-10. The Panthers are fifth in the OVC.
The Panthers are 5-4 in the conference despite being 5-1 a little over a week ago. In the standings, the Panthers trail Austin Peay, who beat them in last season’s OVC Championship game, by one game.
The Panthers are two games behind Morehead State and Tennessee-Martin. Both of those teams currently own the tiebreaker over the Panthers.
Tennessee Tech is currently leading the conference with an 8-1 OVC record and a 14-4 overall record.
The Panthers will host Tennessee Tech 5:30 p.m. Thursday in Lantz Arena to try to snap their three-game losing streak.
Crunk on tear
Ta’Kenya Nixon, a sophomore guard, throws the ball up during the game against Morehead State Jan. 15 in Lantz Arena. (Audrey Sawyer
