The Auburn Tigers women's basketball team will face a tough offensive challenge as it prepares to face the South Carolina Gamecocks Sunday at 2 p.m.
The Gamecocks are coming off a 59-48 conference win against the University of Alabama and close out its three-game home stand against the Georgia Bulldogs today.
The Gamecocks held Alabama to just 30.4 percent shooting and rank 95 out of 333 nationally in scoring defense (59.6).
Auburn head coach Nell Fortner said she felt her team showed signs of improvement following the Tennessee game, but knows there is still room for improvement.
"We need to shoot the ball better, and we have been," Fortner said. "We were challenged today. We just need to get back to knocking shots down, and I thought we had some good shots at the beginning of the game."
Key players for the Gamecocks include sophomore guard Ieasia Walker and junior guard La'Keisha Sutton. Sutton is second on the team in scoring with an average of 9.7 points per game.
Walker has been named AgSouth Athlete of the week for her performance against Tennessee and Alabama while leading the team in scoring in both games last week.
Walker also leads the team with an average 2.4 steals per game.
Auburn will have its first bye of the month to get ready for the Gamecocks, following a 73-53 loss against No. 5 Tennessee.
"I think everyone is looking forward to a bye week," said senior guard Alli Smalley. "We can get our legs back and get our focus back for the next game, so we can get some good rest this week in preparation."
Smalley and sophomore guard Blanche Alverson paced the Tigers with 13 points in the loss.
After scoring three three-pointers, Alverson now trails Lynn Stevenson by just five three-pointers for ninth all-time in career three-point field goals.
"I think we can definitely learn a lot from this game because we have talked a lot about things that we could have done better that we discussed before the game that we did not execute when we got out there," Smalley said. "We can learn from that, but at the same time, we still have to look ahead and get ready for South Carolina."
Sophomore guard Morgan Toles had seven assists against the Volunteers and now has at least five assists in 11 of the last 13 games.
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