MIAMI (January 18, 2017) -- With two wins in the last three Conference USA games, the FIU women's basketball program returns to action on the road this weekend, starting with a Thursday evening game at defending league champion Middle Tennessee, which tips at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. The game will be streamed live on ESPN3 and the Watch ESPN app. Middle has won the last eight in a row in the series, and 25-of-34 all-time meetings between the programs. MT is 13-2 all-time on its home court against FIU. The Panthers and Lady Raiders concluded the regular season last year with a 77-55 Middle victory before both teams headed to the C-USA Tournament.
 
FIU enters Thursday's game with a 4-12 mark, 2-3 in Conference USA. Last Thursday, the Panthers won the program's first triple-overtime game, an 88-87 home result over UTEP. Sophomore point guard Kristian Hudson (Birmingham, Alabama) hit a 33-foot running jumper at the buzzer to win the game, playing all 55 minutes, a school record. She was named C-USA Co-Player of the Week for the first time in her career. During the game, Hudson hit her 19^th consecutive free throw, another school record, in a run lasting four games. She posted a career high 35 points, including the game-winning bucket, which was her only three-pointer of the game, and set career highs for points, field goals made (11), free throws made (12) and attempted (13), and tied her career high with 10 assists for her first double-double of the season. The victory, which gave FIU its second-straight at home for the first time since 2013, also put the Panthers into a 2-0 home start, never before accomplished as a Conference USA member school.
 
Hudson achieved a pair of double-doubles for the week when she posted an 11-point and career-high 10-rebound performance on Saturday in a nine-point loss to UTSA. In two games for the week, she averaged 23.0 points in 45.5 minutes played, 7.5 made free throws, 9.0 rebounds and 8.0 assists per game. Hudson is second in the league in minutes played overall, but is the only player averaging over the regulation 40 minutes-per-game in conference games only. She is ninth in scoring and fifth in assists in conference games, while 14th in scoring, sixth in assists overall among C-USA student-athletes this season. This is the first C-USA weekly honor of her career. Today, Hudson was named to the NCAA Women's Starting Five, honoring the best performances of the previous week.
 
Freshman guard Alexis Gordon (Palm Bay, Florida / Covenant Christian) was named the C-USA Freshman of the Week Monday. Gordon played a career-high 52 minutes after scoring 15 points in Thursday's UTEP win. She scored six points in 31 minutes in the Saturday home loss to UTSA. Gordon leads FIU and is third in C-USA in three-point percentage (.383) and fourth in three-pointers made per game (2.4). She shot .500 in both games for the week from beyond the arc for the Panthers, who are fourth in the league in long-range percentage (.332) this season. This is Gordon's second Freshman of the Week honor, having previously won on November 28. She is the first two-winner of Freshman of the Week in the same season since Kiandre'a Pound in 2015 won the award six times.
 
It was the first time as a member of Conference USA that the Panthers had a player on both lists in the same week.
 
FIU is third in the league in free-throw shooting percentage (.715) and fifth in steals (8.3 per game) and is one win away from matching last season's conference and overall win totals, with 13 more games left to play.
 
Middle Tennessee enters the game at 9-7, and among the league leaders with a 4-1 Conference USA mark. The Lady Raiders lost their first league game last Sunday at WKU, by a 66-51 score. The Lady Raiders are one spot ahead of FIU in free-throw shooting, at .769 through 16 games. Lady Raider Ty Petty leads the league with a .914 mark from the free-throw line, the 11th-best mark in the country. Alex Johnson is second in conference with an 18.2 points-per-game mark.
 
FIU will play at UAB on Saturday to finish up the weekend road trip.  
 
For women's basketball ticket information, contact the FIU Ticket Office at 305-FIU-GAME or log onto www.FIUSports.com.
 
Fans are encouraged to follow the Panthers on Twitter (@FIUWBB) and become a fan on Facebook (Facebook.com/FIUWBasketball) for all the latest FIU women's basketball news. Follow all of FIU's 18 athletic teams on Google+ (FIU Athletics), Twitter (@FIUAthletics), Facebook (Facebook.com/FIUSports), YouTube (FIUPanthers), and Instagram (FIUathletics).
 
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About FIU Athletics: FIU Athletics is home to more than 400 student-athletes in 18 different sports. Athletic events are played in seven different venues on FIU's campuses (Modesto A. Maidique and Biscayne Bay), including FIU Arena and at the FIU Football Stadium.
 
About FIU: Florida International University is recognized as a Carnegie engaged university. Its colleges and schools offer more than 180 bachelor¹s, master¹s and doctoral programs in fields such as engineering, international relations, architecture, law and medicine. As one of South Florida's anchor institutions, FIU is Worlds Ahead in its local and global engagement, finding solutions to the most challenging problems of our time. FIU emphasizes research as a major component of its mission. FIU has awarded 200,000 degrees and enrolls 50,000 students in two campuses and three centers including FIU Downtown on Brickell and the Miami Beach Urban Studios. FIU is a member of Conference USA and has 400 student-athletes participating in 18 sports. For more information about FIU, visit http://www.fiu.edu/.