GAMEDAY IN THE GREENHOUSE: Seward County vs. Neosho County Basketball

GAME PREVIEW:The Seward County Lady Saints begin a three game home stand tonight in the Green-house as they host the visiting Neosho County Panthers in Jayhawk Conference action.Neosho County makes the trip to Liberal for the third straight season after the Lady Saints and Panthers opened Region VI Tournament play against one another each of the past two seasons. Neither of those contests were close from the start as Seward County won the pair by a combined 198-85, taking last years contest 108-49 with five different players reaching double figures in scoring. Seward and Neosho have played 26 times all-time with the Lady Saints winning all 26 meetings.Seward County comes into tonight trying to find their footing once again. After starting the season 8-1, the Lady Saints have dropped 3 of their last 6 and 2 of their last 3 includ-ing an overtime road loss Saturday against Independence. The turnover bug has bitten the Lady Saints hard over the past three games as Seward has coughed the ball up 92 times during the stretch. Seward's shooting has hit a wall in the three road contests as well as the Lady Saints are just 7 for 45 (16%) from the three point line and 31-61 (51%) from the free throw line during the span. On the positive side, the Lady Saints have contin-ued to get a huge boost on the inside from freshman Joanna Grymek who is averaging 16.8 points and 8.6 rebounds per game during conference action while shooting 62% from the field on the season which ranks 13th nationally.Neosho County is continuing their rebuilding process this season, coming off of back to back double digit win seasons for the first time in the past 20 seasons this year. The Pan-thers are 7-6 overall and 1-4 in Jayhawk Conference action coming into tonight after a tough 57-55 loss at home to Garden City on Saturday. Part of Neosho's problems this season have come on the offensive end where they rank near the bottom of the Jayhawk Conference in every major category. They average just 62.9 points per game and shoot under 39% from the field which both rank 11th of 14 teams. One brightspot on the offen-sive end for the Panthers has been the play of freshman Kascity Martin who leads the team and ranks 11th in the league, averaging 13.9 points per game.

GAME PREVIEW:In what promises to be a high-flying affair between the top two scoring teams in the Jayhawk Conference, the Neosho County Panthers come to the Greenhouse tonight to take on the Seward County Saints in a battle between a pair of 3-2 teams looking to remain in the race atop the conference standings.The Saints and Panthers last met in the second round of the 2014 Region VI Tourna-ment with Seward coming out on top of a 73-68 slugfest at Koch Arena. In that game, now Seward redshirt sophomore Niem Stevenson scored a game high 30 points and also had 8 rebounds in the Saints win. The last time Neosho was here in the Greenhouse, it was not pretty for the Panthers, the Saints 2011 Jayhawk West Championship team dismantled the orange and black to the tune of a 102-59 win in early November. Seward has won five straight in the series with the Panthers last win coming in the quarterfinals of the 2005 Re-gion VI Tournament in Salina.After a red hot 3-0 start to Jayhawk Conference play and a rise to #15 in the NJCAA Top 25 Poll, the Saints are reeling a bit coming into tonight after back to back losses to Pratt and Independence to fall to #24 in the poll. Things looked good for Seward early in the In-dependence game as they led by 11 with 7:30 to go in the first half, but things took a turn for the worse as the half came to a close and the Pirates dominated the second half in route to a 13 point win. To right the ship tonight against a physical front line of Neosho, the Saints will need to figure things out on the glass where they have been outrebounded in four straight games, by an average of 14 rebounds per game.Neosho came into the season with high expectations after going 25-5 on the floor before having to give back seven of those games due to an NJCAA violation. The Panthers have lived up to those expectations thus far, coming into tonight 11-3 overall and 3-2 in Jayhawk Conference action. The Panthers are used to tight games down the stretch, having seen two of their last four conference games go to overtime and all four games separated by four points or less. Neosho's high octane offense is led by athletic forwards Freddie McSwain and Richard Granberry who have combined to average 32 points and 16 rebounds per game between them this season.