Lincoln continues early season trend by hosting Classic

TeAira Epps and the Lincoln Blue Tigers will take on Rockhurst tonight in the LU Home Classic.
TeAira Epps and the Lincoln Blue Tigers will take on Rockhurst tonight in the LU Home Classic.

The Lincoln women's basketball team accomplished Step 1 in its five-part goal. Step 2 comes tonight.

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Sync Weekly

Allison Herndon and sis Elizabeth Sharp pose with a future Sync reader.

The Blue Tigers opened the season Nov. 4 at Jason Gym with a 112-102 win in double overtime in an exhibition game with Living the Dream.

Lincoln gets the season started for real tonight against Rockhurst as part of the LU Home Classic, the second of five straight home games to start the schedule.

"Last year, we didn't play but maybe one non-conference home game," Lincoln coach Katie Vaughn said. "Going into the (Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association), I would love to go in 5-0.

"If you're traveling to a lot of games, you're battling a lot of things, so I wanted to set us up for the best possible way to go into it."

The opener seemed to go pretty well, as Lincoln was able to mesh its returnees and newcomers pretty well.

"I wanted us to get some confidence with all these newcomers coming in and the players trying to get to know each other and know me," Vaughn said. "We needed some confidence and I figured the best way to do that was to play at home to start out."

So far, so good.

"Some people may say, "You need to travel some to learn how to play on the road.' We're going to play enough on the road, we'll figure that out as we go," Vaughn said with a laugh. "And we've got a bunch of junior-college kids, so it's not like they haven't traveled to play before."

The Classic gets started at 5 p.m. today with Missouri-St. Louis taking on Harris-Stowe, followed by Lincoln and Rockhurst at 7 p.m.

On Saturday, Harris-Stowe and Rockhurst will meet at 2 p.m., followed by Lincoln against UMSL at 4 p.m.

"Those will be two good games for us," Vaughn said. "Those teams play quite a few MIAA schools, so it will line out how we'll match up with them."