Rivals East Central and Meridian Square off Thursday Night

•Both women’s teams among the NJCAA’s best, men at crossroads

(MERIDIAN) –Meridian Community College women’s basketball team (11-1, 1-0) prepares for a divisional showdown versus rival-East Central Community College (10-1, 1-0) on Thursday evening at the Brackeen-Wood Gymnasium in Decatur.

The game will feature two of the nation’s top NJCAA women’s basketball teams who are both undefeated in the MACJC’s South Division. ECCC is ranked #13 in the latest NJCAA national poll, while MCC received 11 votes in the poll, just 7 shy of entering into the top-25, and they sit at #26.

“In athletics, you hope for a chance to compete in a big game and challenge yourself,” said MCC women’s basketball coach Hilary Allen.

“Certainly going over to face ECC at their place is going to pose a great challenge for our team, but I think that we’re up for that challenge.’

Meridian is ranked in the 15th nationally among team offenses by averaging over 80 points per game.

“ECCC is good offensively too, they’ve beat some strong teams from the North Division already and they have an excellent point guard,” said Allen

East Central scored 87 points in their MACJC South Division opening win versus Jones County Monday night, behind four players that scored in double figures. Lady Warrior guard Tanesha Brown ranks in the national top-20 in individual scoring with 17.6 points per game.

“Winning this game doest guarantee you’re going to win the division and losing it doesn’t mean that you season is over,” said Allen.

“But you have to win games on the road in this conference to be successful and this is an opportunity to try and get one of those wins against a great team,” said Allen.

Following Thursday’s game, the Lady Eagles host Jones County on Monday while the Lady Warriors host Copiah-Lincoln on Monday.

On the men’s side, both East Central and Meridian are at the crossroads in their season as both teams hover around .500. ECCC is 6-6 while MCC is 7-5.

The good news: both teams are 1-0 in division play.

“We have to have a short term memory,” said MCC coach George Brooks.

“We won our first division game but we can’t get hung up on that win, we have to be prepared for ECCC- which is always a well coached team.”

MCC returns only one player off of last year’s roster, Regis Huddleston, and at mid-term lost their leading scorer, Jason Windom who was averaging over 19 points per game.

“Like I said before, as long as one player doesn’t try to replace Jason, we’ll be fine,” said Brooks.

“We just have to continue to take pride in our defense and continue to rebound the basketball.”

The women’s game tips off at 6 p.m. while the men tip off at 8 p.m.