Quicker EKU women wear down Otahkians

Southeast Missourian

Eastern Kentucky's run-and-gun Lady Colonels ran Southeast Missouri State University's Otahkians out of the Show Me Center Thursday night.

The Lady Colonels, the Ohio Valley Conference's highest-scoring women's basketball team at nearly 80 points a game, bettered their average considerably with a 94-67 win.

EKU improved to 11-3 overall and 3-0 in the OVC while dropping Southeast to 8-5 and 1-2.

"This is probably our best game of the season," said EKU forward Charlotte Sizemore, who scored 16 points and came up with eight of the Lady Colonels' whopping 18 steals . "Both ends of the floor, I think we played really good tonight."

Sizemore would get no argument from Southeast coach Ed Arnzen, who had plenty of praise for the Lady Colonels and little for the Otahkians.

"We just ran into a very good team on a night when we were flat," Arnzen said. "They are really good, quick and athletic with excellent shooters. It seemed like they did about everything right.

"We're not talented enough to play with the better clubs in the league unless we really come ready to play and this might have been our flattest night of the season."

Katie Kelly paced EKU with 17 points, Zoey Artist had 15 and Miranda Eckerle added 11. Nine players scored at least five points for the Lady Colonels.

Southeast got 20 points from Lori Chase and 15 from Veronica Benson. Freshman Andrea Koeper, a Jackson High School graduate, came off the bench for a season-high nine points and a game-high 10 rebounds.

The Lady Colonels took control shortly after Benson got the game's opening basket.

EKU scored the next seven points and never looked back, building a 47-35 halftime lead and using an 18-5 run at the outset of the second half to blow the contest wide open.

Southeast committed 25 turnovers and hit just two of 10 3-point attempts while shooting 47 percent from the field overall.