6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29
Abe Lemons Arena inside Freede Center | Oklahoma City

THE MATCHUP

• Oklahoma City University and Our Lady of the Lake (Texas) open the 2021-22 season with a non-conference game on Friday at Abe Lemons Arena
• OCU holds a 6-3 advantage in the all-time series over Our Lady of the Lake
• In the last meeting between the two teams, the Stars defeated the Saints 93-85 at the Saints Halo Classic in San Antonio on Nov. 30, 2019
• OCU is ranked third in the Sooner Athletic Conference preseason poll
• Our Lady of the Lake is picked to finish second (in a tie with Xavier) in the Red River Athletic Conference preseason poll
• OCU received votes in the NAIA Women's Basketball Preseason Coaches Top-25 poll

ABOUT THE STARS

• OCU returns three letter winners from the 2019-20 squad that finished with a 30-2 record and was one of four No. 1 seeds headed to the NAIA Division I Championship Tournament before that competition was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic
• Senior center Abby Selzer is OCU's most honored returnee. She is a two-time consensus All-American and one-time Sooner Athletic Conference player of the year and SAC athlete of the year. With 74 career games played in three seasons, Selzer's career averages are 17.3 points, 7.0 rebounds and 1.0 block per game
• Senior guard Erika Ankney has played in 37 career games for the Stars, averaging 10.1 points, 3.1 assists and 2.0 steals over that span. She earned third-team all-conference honors as a sophomore in 2019-20
• Junior guard Paige Pendley averaged 9.0 points and 5.6 rebounds per game for the Stars last season. She earned Great Lakes Valley Conference all-freshman honors at Rockhurst (Mo.) in 2019-20
• OCU finished with a 5-1 record in an abbreviated 2020-21 season
• OCU missed out on the NAIA Tournament last season, snapping a streak of 23 consecutive trips to that tournament. Overall, the Stars have made 26 NAIA Tournament appearances with nine National Championships won (1988, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2017)

ABOUT THE SAINTS

• OLLU enters its 13th season of competition under the direction of first-year head coach Julian Flores
• OLLU finished with a 2-4 record in an abbreviated 2020-21 season
• The Saints leading returning scorer is junior guard Angeline Sanchez. She averaged 17.3 points per game in six games played last season
• OLLU's roster includes two players with Oklahoma ties. Senior guard Gabrielle Guzman, a graduate of Moore High School, is in her second season with the Saints and junior center Makayla White, a graduate of Choctaw High School, is in her first season at the San Antonio school

MEET THE COACHES

Brett Tahah (5-1, second season with OCU)
• Tahah is the first former OCU player to serve as head coach of the program
• As a player from 2002-10 she helped lead the team to a 63-10 record, two conference championships and two NAIA Fab Four appearances
• Tahah compiled a 117-50 head-coaching record with two state tournament semifinal berths in six years at Oklahoma high schools Frontier, Elgin, Hobart and Lookeba-Sickles

Jillian Flores (first season with OLLU)
• Flores takes on her first head coaching position after serving as an assistant coach at Iowa Western College for three seasons
• Prior to her stint at IWC she was an assistant coach at two NAIA schools, Bellevue (Neb.) and Peru State (Neb.)
• During her collegiate basketball career, Flores played at Iowa Western and Benedictine College (Kan.)

ON THE AIR

• Oklahoma City University athletics provides live and on-demand audio, stats and video of its contests on OCU's BlueFrame platform. Cost to watch OCU athletics live is $4.99 per game, while there is a women's basketball season pass available for $56
• Philip Younts will provide the play-by-play. Younts is a 2016 graduate of OCU with his bachelor's degree in youth ministry
• OCU has partnered with BlueFrame Technology to create the OCU Sports Network. To watch live video, fans can find the Stars' BlueFrame platform over the web on the SAC Network along with streaming apps for mobile devices (iOS and Android) and televisions including Amazon Fire Tablet, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV and Roku. The app can be found and installed by searching for the SAC Network