COLUMBIA, Mo. – The University of Missouri women’s basketball team returns to the friendly confines of Mizzou Arena for a showdown against Vanderbilt. Tipoff is slated for 8 p.m., and the contest will be broadcast on SEC Network and KTGR.
Missouri holds a 14-8 overall record with a 3-6 mark in SEC action after dropping a contest Sunday at Kentucky, 77-54. Senior forward Hayley Frank led the way for the Tigers offensively with 21 points and five boards. It marked the third-consecutive performance in which she led the team in scoring.
Frank continues to climb Mizzou’s scoring leaderboard, as she has totaled 1,407 career points to put her at 12th on the program’s all-time scoring list. Leading into Thursday’s contest, she sits just 26 points back from Jordan Frericks (2013-18) for 11th place.
Another Tiger looking to set a scoring milestone is graduate guard Lauren Hansen. As she is set to play the 100th game of her collegiate career, Hansen enters the contest with 959 career points.
Thursday’s contest will be the 11th in the all-time series between Mizzou and Vanderbilt, with the Tigers holding a 7-3 lead over the Commodores. Recent history favors Missouri, as the team has won the last six contests in the series.
In last season’s lone clash against the Commodores, the Tigers won a 66-52 affair by leading all four quarters. Four Tigers scored in double figures en route to victory, led by Hansen’s 15 and Frank’s 13.
The Commodores enter Thursday’s matchup with a 10-12 record to go along with a 1-7 performance against SEC opponents. Vanderbilt grabbed its first conference win of the campaign Sunday with an 88-79 win over Texas A&M.
Head coach Shea Ralph is in the midst of her second season at the helm for Vanderbilt. After a storied tenure as an assistant at UConn, Ralph’s record has accumulated a 26-31 record as the Commodores’ head coach.
Vanderbilt is led offensively by senior guard Ciaja Harbison, whose 19.6 points per game rank second in the SEC. In the Commodores’ last outing, Harbison tied a program record with 41 points on 14-of-19 shooting.
Mizzou’s opponents hold the conference’s best free-throw shooting percentage at 73.4 percent and rank third in the SEC in 3-point shooting percentage, knocking down threes at a 34.3 percent clip.
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