When Southern’s Aleightyah Fontenot hit a 30-foot runner with no time on the clock, it was the unkindest of shots as the Jaguars knocked out Jackson State 65-64 in the SWAC semifinal game at Bartow Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, last season. That shot kept the Tigers from advancing to the SWAC championship game and ended their bid for a third consecutive NCAA Tournament berth.

Jackson State coach Tomekia Reed said she foresaw losing to Southern. Reed said her team, which went 17-1 in the SWAC during the regular season, went into the tournament really weak. The Tigers struggled to get past Grambling State in the quarterfinals.

“We had a lot of friction on the team down the stretch that I had to get rid of," Reed said. "It was a new team, and people don’t understand that I had three new people in the starting lineup that didn’t play the year before. I had Ti’lan Boler, who only averaged nine minutes a game the season before. We just had a really new team. What that loss did was give us a wake-up call.”

Jackson State was announced Tuesday as the favorite to win the Southwestern Athletic Conference title this season, and three players were selected to the preseason All-SWAC team in a polling of coaches and Sports Information Directors voted on .

“Expectations for this year are to come in and be great,” Reed said. “We want to continue to dominate, statistically, our games and opponents. We want to be competitive. Last year we played a lot of teams. We didn’t give our best effort last season.”

Boler was selected as SWAC preseason Player of the Year. Boler averaged 12.6 points and 4.9 rebounds per game in 2022-23. Jackson State's Angel Jackson was selected as SWAC preseason Defensive Player of the Year. Jackson and Daphane White were selected to the preseason All-SWAC second team.

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“Ti’lan Boler has done it the right way,” Reed said. “She has been in my program since she has been a freshman. She started off with very limited minutes and she just increased her minutes because she works extremely hard in practice.”

Jackson, who is 6-foot-6, was fourth on the team in scoring at 9.2 points per game last season but led the Tigers with 74 blocks in 31 games. The 6-5 White averaged 10.1 points and was second in block shots with 30 in 31 games.

“Daphane and Angel are our twin towers,” Reed said. “They are so special to our program. They are rim protectors and they bring energy to the program and they complement each other.”

Jackson State opens its 2023-24 season at home against LeMoyne-Owen on Nov. 7 at the Lee E. Williams Athletic and Assembly Center.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Jackson State women's basketball dominates SWAC's preseason polling