SAN ANTONIO — With the regular season nearing a close, the St. Mary's Lady Rattlers are on track for their best year since the 2007-08 season, when St. Mary's went undefeated in Heartland Conference play.
Likewise,
Felicia Jacobs' senior season is showing to be the best performance of her career.
Sitting pretty with a 7-1 conference record and the best overall record in the league at 15-5, head coach
Jason Martens' seventh season has seen a peak performance in his squad — and in one of its leading players, Jacobs (San Antonio).
Playing in 96 games to date since her freshman year, Jacobs has trumped all of her previous seasons statistically, with six games still left to go in the regular season. The Lady Rattlers will host Arkansas-Fort Smith in a pivotal conference matchup at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Bill Greehey Arena.
Jacobs is averaging a career-high 10.1 points per game, one of three Rattlers averaging double-digits per game, and has bested her 31 steals last season with her team-high 53 steals this season.
“Growing as a person over the last four years, I've matured,” said Jacobs, who averages 27.3 minutes per contest, “I've learned what my role is here. I've gotten better in the gym, putting in work in the summer and in our preseason. I worked hard to get better to improve myself to help benefit the team.”
Reigning as the team to beat since the conference ranked the Rattlers No. 1 in the preseason poll, St. Mary's continues to hold the title as as the league's best, currently tied for the No. 1 rank with the University of Texas-Permian Basin. The Rattlers held the No. 1 spot alone for the first half of league play, boasting an undefeated record until a heartbreaking loss to UTPB pushed them into a tie with the Falcons.
And St. Mary's wouldn't be there without Jacobs.
Facing Lions (6-13, 2-4 in conference) Thursday, the Rattlers hope to have a repeat performance of their last faceoff with the Lions, in which they won by 20 points. Blowouts have been no stranger to the Rattlers this season, as they lead the league with the largest scoring margin with an average margin of victory of 9.5 points. St. Mary's also leads the conference in field-goal percentage (.436) and 3-point percentage (.362), helped by Jacobs' team-leading percentage from behind the arc at .435 (10 of 23) and third-best shooting percentage overall at .464 (71 of 153).
Jacobs' well-rounded play and her aggressiveness on the court has been key to the Rattlers' current .750 winning percentage. Standing at 5-foot-6, the senior guard has recorded four double-doubles this season, the most on the team, and is the team's second-leading rebounder (116), behind only 6-foot forward
Morgan Pullins (So., Franklin, Mich.), who has 156 total rebounds this season.
“Rebounding, I just found a way to get in there and box out,” said Jacobs, who totaled 111 rebounds in her junior season. “And just grab boards down. It's a lot of hard work but I'm doing my best at it.”
With Thursday's contest against the Lions being one of three home games left for the Rattlers, St. Mary's sight for hosting the conference tournament with a stellar 9-1 record at home will be much in their benefit. But the Rattlers have their sights set a little further, foreseeing a possible home-court advantage in the national tournament, which will be hosted at St. Mary's for the second straight year.
St. Mary's will host the Elite Eight from March 26-29 at Greehey Arena.
“That was the biggest thing we said when we came in this year,” said Jacobs of the Rattlers' goal of advancing to the national tournament. “We don't want to be sitting in the stands watching the Elite Eight and the championship again. It (was terrible) watching other teams play on our court and it's very rare the national championship is played in the same place it was the (previous) year, so we're trying to take full advantage of it. But now we're taking everything game-by-game, we know we have to win-out for the rest of the season. We don't want to lose anymore, we can't lose any more games.”
Jacobs' last six games of the regular season as a Rattler will warrant success from her own hard work as well as the rest of the Rattlers — as well as what Jacobs credits to Martens. The guard has spent her entire Rattler career under the coaching helm of Martens, and just as the pair won the Heartland Conference championship her freshman season, Jacobs hopes to end her senior season in similar fashion.
“(Jason) is an amazing guy, on a coach level and friend-wise,” Jacobs said. “He's just open to us and comfortable with us, and it helps a lot. We win for ourselves, but yet we win for him too. Just as much as we hate to lose, he hates to lose and he's here working for us. He's here early; he's here late at night; he breaks down film; he stays up. So not only are we trying to win for him, but for us and for our school of course.”
They'll get that chance, starting Thursday night.
St. Mary's University, as a Catholic Marianist University, fosters the formation of people in faith and educates leaders for the common good through community service, integrated liberal arts and professional education, and academic excellence. The University has six athletic national titles: men's basketball (1989–NAIA), baseball (2001–NCAA Div. II), softball (1986–NAIA and 2002–NCAA Div. II) and an individual national champion in men's golf (2006–NCAA Div. II) and a national academic championship in men's golf (2009–NCAA Div. II). St. Mary's also had more than 40 percent of its athletes named to conference, regional and/or national honor rolls this past year. St. Mary's student–athletes graduation rate is 65 percent, higher than the NCAA Division II average of 55 percent. To learn more about St. Mary's, visit www.rattlerathletics.com.
