STARKVILLE — The twinkle in Katia May’s eye gave away her answer before the question was finished.
The Mississippi State senior guard’s raised left eyebrow only magnified her eagerness to prove she and junior Jerica James are up to the task.
Asked if she thought she and James are ready to take on a bigger scoring role, May didn’t hesitate.
“That’s what a lot of people don’t know, me and JJ (Jerica James) can shoot. There are just a lot of options that don’t come to us for shooting because we have shooters on our team,” May said. “As you saw tonight, we knocked down a lot of shots. If they give us the shots, that just helps our team and gets them open more because they have to concentrate on me and them, too, so it opens it up for everybody.”
May made her comments Tuesday night following MSU’s 81-63 victory against Savannah State at Humphrey Coliseum. The victory raised MSU’s record to 5-0 and set the stage for its first extended road trip of the season. That trip will kick off at 5 p.m. Friday when MSU takes on Division I newcomer Grand Canyon University in its first game at the Gulf Coast Showcase in Naples, Fla. MSU will play the winner of the UCLA-James Madison winner on Saturday in its second game at the three-day event, which ends Sunday.
For May and James, a junior point guard, the games will give them three more opportunities to build on solid starts. Through five games, May and James have formed one of the nation’s most effective point guard tandems as far as assist-to-turnover ratio. With 62 assists and 15 turnovers, May and James have played key roles in a run of four games in a row with at least 81 points. Against Savannah State, May and James joined the scoring festivities, as James scored a season-high 10 points (on 4-of-5 shooting) and had four steals in 16 minutes. May added seven points (3-of-6 shooting) and six assists in 24 minutes.
The scoring was an added bonus because May and James entered the game shooting a combined 35.6 percent from the field and averaging 4.8 points per game apiece. Those totals are consistent with their combined 29.9 percent shooting from the field (97 of 324) and 5.1 and 4.0 ppg. scoring averages, respectively, last season.
But May and James appear to be playing with a new-found confidence. Neither of the guards have had a season with more assists than turnovers in their MSU careers, but May has had at least double the number of assists to turnovers in each game this season, including three games with 10 or more assists. James has had double the number of assists to turnovers three times.
Given their success in finding teammates in scoring positions, opponents are bound to try a different approach, which means they could dare May and James to shoot and deny shooters like Kendra Grant and Breanna Richardson the ball and pack it in in the post and collapse on center Martha Alwal.
If that’s the case, May says bring it on.
“It will open up a lot for us (if teams do that),” May said. “We’ll kind of be, in a sense, hard to beat. It is hard when everybody on your team can score in some way because me and JJ can shoot.”
MSU coach Vic Schaefer likes what May and James are doing and how they are running the team. He wants them to be more vocal in calling out plays and taking charge of the offense.
Grand Canyon (5-0) is coming off a 67-65 overtime victory against North Texas on Tuesday. The program, which went 76-16 the past three seasons in Division II, has eight seniors and is in its first season of the Western Athletic Conference and as a Division I member. Junior Kaitlyn Petersen leads four players in double figures with 15.6 points per game. The Antelopes advanced to the semifinals of the NCAA Division II West Region tournament last season.
MSU has only two seniors — May and Candace Foster — in its second season under Schaefer. A 2013 recruiting class ranked No. 35 in the nation and a 2014 recruiting class ranked No. 20 in the nation by Dan Olson’s Collegiate Girls Basketball Reports and espnW’s HoopGurlz has the program back on track to returning to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2010, when it advanced to the Sweet 16 for the first time.
Last season, MSU started 2-1 but then suffered three losses in three days to Winthrop, UC Santa Barbara, and Central Florida at the Hardwood Tournament in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. May hopes the Bulldogs can use the lessons they learned from that experience this weekend to avoid a similar experience.
“We just have to come prepared to play,” May said. “When you are playing back to back to back, your focus has to be on that team and you have to let go of the last game, win or lose. You have to execute what we learned in the scouting report, play our game, and play hard.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino @ctsportseditor.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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