GameDay Central | Game Notes

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Despite losing three of its last four regular season games, Louisiana Tech has plenty of reasons to feel confident heading into its Conference USA Tournament opener Wednesday against Florida Atlantic.

The 7th seeded Lady Techsters (15-14, 10-8) will tip off against the 10th seeded Owls (13-16, 7-11 C-USA) at 1:30 p.m. at Bartow Arena in a game that will be televised live on the American Sports Network as well as streamed at AmericanSportsNet.com. The contest can be heard on the LA Tech Sports Network with the pregame show starting at 1 p.m.

Head coach Tyler Summitt's team recorded its most impressive win of the season Saturday, defeating Southern Miss 67-64 in Hattiesburg - only USM's second loss in its last 10 games. It was the first win by a LA Tech team over a team with 20 wins since the 2011-12 Lady Techsters defeated Utah State in the semifinals of the Western Athletic Conference Tournament.

"I think the Southern Miss win was huge for our confidence level," Summitt said. "It really made our players feel good to know we could beat (what was) the No. 2 team in our conference. Now they know we can beat anybody. I really think they believe we can beat anybody in the conference. Hopefully we can make a run.

"Going into the (USM) game, it wasn't as much about if we won or lost, but we had to get back to playing hard. We had some tough practices before Southern Miss and the players really responded. I thought we got back to playing hard."

Senior guard Kelia Shelton, who was named second team all-CUSA on Sunday, scored 19 points in the win over Southern Miss. Shelton is one of five starting seniors on the LA Tech team and said she and her teammates believe they can make some noise this week in Birmingham.

"I feel like we are playing well coming off the win against Southern Miss," Shelton said. "We were in fourth place (a few weeks ago) and we wanted the bye, but I think we lost our focus and took a couple of things for granted. We didn't earn the bye.

"The Southern Miss win was good for the team. It brought us a lot of confidence. It showed us that anybody can beat anybody in this conference. Going into the tournament we think we really have a chance to do something special. We are going to play a good Florida Atlantic team, and we are going to play hard throughout the tournament."

Although not overconfident, Tech knows it already handed Florida Atlantic a 73-68 setback in Boca Raton in a game that saw the Lady Techsters overcome a 19-point first half deficit. In that contest in early February, LA Tech trailed 33-14 in the first half before storming back for the third largest come-from-behind win in program history.

However, Summitt is quick to point out that Wednesday's game will have a totally different feel from the first time the two teams met.

"I think this game will be very different than the first Florida Atlantic game," Summitt said. "We were coming off of two players being suspended (the previous game) so I didn't put (Chrisstasia Walter or Kanedria Andrews) in the game until about 11 minutes remaining in the first half. We also didn't have Kevione Moten. Florida Atlantic played without their second leading scorer (Ali Gorrell). It's going to be two very different teams. We know what they have and what they run. Both teams will be prepared, and we are excited."

The Lady Techsters also have history on their side - both recent and not-so-recent. Since Tech joined the American South Conference in 1987, the Lady Techsters are 57-11 all-time in conference tournament play and have won 16 conference tournament championships. Even more importantly to this year's team, seven of the 10 players were a part of last year's squad that entered the C-USA Tournament as the No. 14 seed and promptly pulled off a pair of upsets before falling to No. 3 seed and host UTEP in the quarterfinals.

"I think our team has really been looking forward to postseason all year," Summitt said. "We are excited it is finally here. I think we have some confidence coming off the success in last year's (C-USA Tournament).

"We have to be consistent. In terms of effort, I think we can be consistent and I feel good about that. Now there are some other things that could go wrong. If we have effort every single game then I feel good about our chances and our mindset going into these games."

Florida Atlantic enters the tournament having lost seven of its last nine games, although the Owls played a pair of tough road games at UAB and Middle Tennessee the last week. Florida Atlantic is only 4-10 in games played away from Boca Raton this season.

The Owls are led by first team all-CUSA guard/forward Shaneese Bailey (16.1 ppg, 5.4 rpg) and Ali Gorrell (13.5 ppg, 6.5 rpg) and are a perimeter-oriented team. Florida Atlantic boasts five players that have made 20 or more three-pointers this season, including Malia Kency (52-144), Morgan Robinson (39-129) and Kat Wright (35-120).

Tech leads the all-time series against Florida Atlantic 3-0, although the last two meetings have been decided by a total of six points.