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JACKSONVILLE – The Jacksonville State women's basketball team will open its eight-game Ohio Valley Conference home schedule on Thursday against the Lady Govs of Austin Peay.  The APSU contest will begin a three-game homestand for the Gamecocks.  Tip off is set for 5:30 p.m.

JSU (10-4, 1-1 OVC) opened the 2015 portion of the schedule with a win at SIU Edwardsville a week ago before falling at the buzzer to Eastern Illinois.  APSU (4-10, 1-0 OVC) is in the final stages of a six-game road trip and began OVC action with a win at Eastern Kentucky last Saturday.  Fans ages 18 and under and JSU students get in free.  The contest will also be available on the OVC Digital Network.

The Gamecocks and Lady Govs will battle for the 22nd time on Thursday evening at Pete Mathews Coliseum. Austin Peay enters the contest with a 13-8 advantage in the first 21 match ups between the two programs.  JSU topped APSU, 69-65, last season in Clarksville.  Jax State will be looking for back-to-back wins over the Lady Govs for the first time since it claimed both of the contests during the 2008 conference schedule.  The winner of Thursday's duel will break a 5-5 series deadlock in games played in Jacksonville.  APSU has claimed a win in its last three appearances at Pete Mathews Coliseum.  The last JSU win over the Lady Govs on its home floor was a 75-71 overtime contest on Feb. 19, 2009.

Jax State has excelled at protecting its home floor as it enters Thursday's OVC home opener with Austin Peay with an unblemished mark of 5-0.  Dating back to last season's home finale with Belmont, the Gamecocks have string together six consecutive wins. The last time Jax State strung together six consecutive home wins was during the 2003-04 campaign, which is currently the longest home winning streak in the program's NCAA Division I history.  A win over the Lady Govs would be the seventh consecutive home win for JSU and would match the seven straight wins turned in by the 1991-92 club.

Senior Candace Morton leads the Gamecock scorers with a 12.4 scoring mark and has scored in 11 of the 14 games this season.  Morton, who became a 1,000-point career scorer earlier in the season, cane become the seventh player all time at JSU to have 1,000 career points and 500 rebounds during a career.  The Lexington, Kentucky-guard is 21 rebounds shy of the 500 mark.
Junior Destany McLin ranks second on the club in scoring at 11.9 points per game.  The Athens, Alabama-native also is second on the team in rebounding at 6.9 boards per contest.  Senior Courtney Strain matched her career high of 18 points for the third time this season last Saturday at EIU.  She pushed her season scoring average to 9.6 points per game and ranks among the conference leaders in three-point shooting at 39 percent on the season.  Senior Miranda Cantrell has posted double figures in the scoring column in four of the last five games, including 15 points in her last outing at EIU.

APSU picked up its fourth win of the season in its 2015 Ohio Valley Conference debut with an 81-71 road win at Eastern Kentucky.  The Lady Govs overcame a 16-point second half deficit to pick up the road win last Saturday.  Junior Tiasha Gray not only leads APSU in scoring, but she is the OVC's top-scorer entering the second weekend of league play.  The Clarksville, Tenn.-native averages 19.6 points per game and connecting on 40 percent from the field shooting.  Gray has scored in double figures in 13 of the 14 games this season, including a pair of 30-plus points games (Wright State, Western Kentucky).  Senior Kristen Stainback led the second half charge at EKU on Saturday as she finished with a season-best 26 points on an impressive 9-of-13 (69.2 percent) shooting effort, which included a 6-of-9 effort from three-point range.  The Lady Govs enter the contest as the top three-point shooting team in the OVC at 38 percent from behind the arc.

Following Thursday's action at Pete Mathews Coliseum, the Gamecocks will face the Racers of Murray State for an afternoon matinee at 2 p.m.  All general admission tickets for Saturday's game will be $1, while JSU students and all fans ages 18 and under receive free admission for all home games.