Rifle Faces No. 3 Kentucky Saturday

Saturday, January 27

Lexington, Ky.

8 am

University of Memphis

Kentucky

Photo by: Joe Murphy

Jan 26, 2018 | Rifle

Memphis has posted its best team scores against top-five opponents this season.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The old sports adage goes, "To be the best, you have to play the best."

That's what the University of Memphis rifle team continues to do this Saturday when it travels to Lexington, Ky., to face No. 3 Kentucky. The match starts at 8 a.m. (CT) at the Wildcats' on-campus rifle range.

This season, the Tigers have shot against the nation's No. 1 and No. 2 teams in head-to-head matches and performed well. Memphis shot its best home score of the season – a 4634 – against No. 1 West Virginia Nov. 11. Two weeks earlier (Oct. 28), the Tigers posted their best team score of the season with a 4663 against No. 2 TCU in Fort Worth, Texas.

Although not in a head-to-head match-up, Memphis competed against the No. 3 Wildcats at last weekend's Withrow Invitational. In that event, the Tigers shot a 4646, which was their second-best team score of the campaign.

Head coach Dan Hermsmeier comments
"Kentucky is a great program with a great staff and great facilities. They are going to make a run at the NCAA championship this year. They are a really talented team. It's always fun to compete against them. We need every point we can get in our final matches (to qualify for postseason), so we hope our training will pay off.

"We shot well at Murray State last week. We had some rough spots we need to work on, but we had some good highlights. Everyone is working hard in practice, so hopefully we'll see more of those big scores pop up again."

Tigers Tidbits

This is the Tigers' first trip to Kentucky since the 2015-16 season. That trip to Lexington was a tri-match that also included Murray State.
The Tigers were to host Kentucky as its first opponent in the Memphis Rifle Facility, the program's new on-campus home, in January of 2017. However, the move-in was delayed, so Memphis and Kentucky took their match to Ole Miss' rifle range in Oxford, Miss.
Memphis, as a team, has shot well against some of the nation's best, and so have some individual Tigers. Against No. 2 TCU, Levi Clark (584 smallbore), Leighton Dempster (593 air rifle) and Adriana Hickerson (593 air rifle) all posted career-bests. In the Nov. 11 match vs. No. 1 West Virginia, Dempster recorded a career-high 1167 aggregate. At last weekend's Withrow Invitational that included No. 3 Kentucky and No. 4 Murray State, Amberlie Ezell posted career-highs in smallbore (581) and aggregate (1169), and Dempster tied her career-best air rifle mark (593).
In the Tigers' last visit to Kentucky in 2015-16, Dempster, then a freshman, shot a 591 air-rifle score. At the time, it was her career-best.
In the 2014-15 match versus Kentucky, Haylea Broughton, then a freshman, shot a school-record 596 in air rifle.