Texas State is back at home Monday night and looking to rebound from a competitive loss to a ranked Baylor team with a win over the Jackson State Tigers.
TXST News
- Soph. SG Caleb Asberry returned from injury and looked good in the process, scoring a career high 12 points on 5 for 8 shooting. DeShawn Davidson continues to start at SG, but is averaging just 14 minutes per game through the first 4 games. Asberry has only played in 2 games, missing the other 2 with injury, but is averaging 19 minutes per game. Davidson may be close to losing the starting job to Asberry if I had to guess.
- Jr. PF Isiah Small had a career high 12 rebounds vs. Baylor. The PF position will be key this year to help in rebounding without a physically dominant center. Small’s 9.0 RPG currently is tops in the Sun Belt.
- This game is part of the “Southwestern Showdown presented by Engage Teleheath” which is a non-bracketed exempt multi-team event. Basically teams can play a 29 game regular season schedule unless they play in an early season event/tournament in which case you can play a 31 game schedule. So they’ve gotten creative and invented “events” like this that really aren’t tournaments at all, but a few teams get together and all play each other on their home courts and call it one to get the extra two games. Teams in this event are Texas State, Abilene Christian, Hartford, Jackson State, SMU, and UNLV. TXST will play @ UNLV on Wednesday, host ACU next Monday, then host Hartford on the 30th as part of this event also. I’m not sure if they declare a champion or something at the end based on record or anything. Guess we’ll find out.
Scouting Jackson State
Jackson State is off to an 0-4 start to begin the season. They’ve yet to play a home game and this will be their 5th straight road game. They’ve lost at Cal Baptist, UC Santa Barbara, Tulane, and as part of this event already at SMU. They really haven’t been ultra competitive yet either, losing those games by 23, 21, 9, and 17 points respectively.
Last year they went 13-19 overall and 10-8 in SWAC play, finishing in a three-way tie for 3rd in the 10 team conference. They were upset in the first round of the SWAC tournament by Alabama State to end their season. They were picked to take a small step back and finish 5th in the league this year.
The Tigers’ star player is 6’7″ F/C Jayveous McKinnis. McKinnis was named the preseason SWAC defensive player of the year and was named to the preseason All-SWAC 1st team. He led the team in rebounding, and was 2nd in the SWAC, last year with 7.8 per game. Perhaps his biggest strength is as a shot blocker. McKinnis’s 63 blocks last year were 19 better than 2nd best in the SWAC. And he played fewer games than everyone else in the top 5. He was 4th on the team in scoring at 8.4 per game last year. McKinnis has picked up where he left off last year in these departments as he’s 3rd in the SWAC in rebounding so far at 7.8 per game, has triple the amount of blocks as 2nd place so far with 9 already, and is currently #1 in the SWAC in FG% making 70% of his shots on 21 of 30 shooting. He’s 2nd on the team so far in scoring at 11.5 PPG. McKinnis plays the 5 for the Tigers despite being just 6’7″ and is absolutely 0 threat from the perimeter. That means Terry/Sule likely have man coverage on him all night and will need to play well defensively. Furthermore, they have the SWAC defensive player of the year guarding them. Will be interesting to see if either of them can break out and have a game offensively or if we’ll have to depend more on our backcourt for scoring.
The leading scorer so far, and by a wide margin, is newcomer Tristan Jarrett. Jarrett is a 6’4″ SG that played his freshman season at Kennesaw State before playing last year at Three Rivers College where he was the the 2nd leading JUCO scorer in the nation before he was dismissed from the team in early February because he “broke a training rule”. He was averaging 29 PPG, had 12 30 point games, and 11 double-doubles. Needless to say this guy can probably fill it up. His 19.5 PPG are 2nd in the SWAC right now and his 36.4% 3-point % and 12 made 3s are both 2nd best in the SWAC. So far he’s the only player on the team playing more than 30 minutes per game and is logging more minutes than anyone else in the SWAC so expect to see plenty of Jarrett tonight.
Last year’s leading scorer actually returns and has started all 4 games so far, but currently is just 4th on the team in scoring this year. 6’6″ Sr. G Venjie Wallis scored 12.5 PPG last year to lead the team but is contributing just 6.8 so far this year. Still, I wouldn’t slack off on defending Wallis. 6’6″ is huge for a SWAC guard, but given his size I bet Small ends up defending him tonight. Wallis will shoot it from 3, but he’s really not a good shooter at all. Just don’t leave him wide open out there. He’s an 86.7% FT shooter though so you don’t want to put him on the line. Should be a good task for Small who’s supposed to be a fantastic defender. 6’0″ Jr. homegrown G Jonas James from Jackson is the top bench player, contributing 9.8 PPG off the bench, good for 3rd best on the team. He’s also yet to miss a FT this year going 13/13.
JSU is giving up 86 PPG defensively. It will be interesting to see if we can get the offense rolling in this one similar to how we looked at times vs. Prairie View. They’re allowing teams to shoot 53.4% from the floor, a really high number. Even more alarming for JSU’s defense is they allow a 43% 3-point %. Our guards may see some open looks tonight if that is indicative of anything. JSU is undersized, and similar to Prairie View, look to run a 4 guard set with McKinnis down low. Wallis is 6’6″ so he likely provides some rebounding help but still they’re averaging just 17.3 defensive rebounds per game, which is awful. But that 53.4% FG% defense may have something to do with that. Their opponents aren’t missing a ton of shots which means fewer defensive rebounding opportunities. Still, outside of McKinnis they struggle on the glass and we need to win that battle.
Last Meeting
This is the first ever meeting between Texas State and Jackson State in basketball.
Odds/Time/TV
Texas State opened as a 14.5 point favorite and that has since ballooned out to 15.5. TXST is a gigantic favorite to win this one and it would be a really bad loss if we were to drop this game.
Tip-off is set for 7pm from Strahan. Get out there and support the team if you can.
If not, ESPN+ will have the broadcast with Brant Freeman and Suzanne Fox on the call.
