Ashton Luttrull a key contributor for Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team

Whether she'll be able to play is almost always a game-time decision for Southeast Missouri State shooting guard Ashton Luttrull.

When the Redhawks suit up at the Show Me Center tonight against Jacksonville State there will probably be a conversation between Luttrull and coach Rekha Patterson shortly before tipoff at 5:30 p.m.

Luttrull, who struggles with knee pain from an injury suffered more than three years ago, isn't available to play or even practice every day, and she doesn't ever log the most minutes on her team.

But her impact has been one of the biggest in Southeast's 3-1 start in the Ohio Valley Conference.

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Southeast Missouri State's Ashton Luttrull takes a shot against Missouri-Kansas City's Kelsey Barrett during the third quarter Friday, Nov. 20, 2015 at the Show Me Center. (Fred Lynch)

Luttrull was playing in her final AAU basketball game of the summer of 2012, the summer right before her senior year at Highland High School in Lewistown, Missouri.

As she sits and looks out onto the court at the Show Me Center she points where on the floor she would've been that day in July when an injury to her left knee altered her basketball career.

"I was at the elbow. We were taking the ball out of bounds and the lane was wide open so I cut down the lane and caught a bounce pass and was getting ready to go up and my defender just like nailed me in the back of the leg," Luttrull said, "and so I felt it dislocate and then kind of pop back and obviously there was a lot of pain so I pretty much knew I had just torn my ACL."

Luttrull went to the doctor right away and it was confirmed that she'd torn her left anterior cruciate ligament. The doctor also said her MCL (medial collateral ligament) was partially torn, but thought that if she waited about a month before having surgery the MCL would heal on its own.

She waited, but the MCL wasn't healed when she went in for surgery. Ultimately she had her ACL, MCL and meniscus surgically repaired that day.

The recovery process took much longer than Luttrull originally expected.

"It was really delayed," Luttrull said. "Because the MCL was torn they wouldn't let me straighten it for awhile. Like, normally [with] an ACL injury you're in a Constant Passive Motion machine, and I couldn't do that. I couldn't start rehab for a week, which is kind of odd, and so it took a really long time. I should've been running -- in my mind I should've been running -- like three months [out from surgery] and I couldn't even straighten my leg out all the way."

That led to a return trip to the doctor for an MRI that discovered an abundance of scar tissue, which she had to have removed.

She ended up missing all sports her senior year -- softball and basketball. She'd signed to play for former Southeast coach Ty Margenthaler that November and ended up redshirting the 2013-14 season for the Redhawks.

"I learned a lot," Luttrull said. "I learned to be patient. I learned to encourage. I think I'm a lot better at encouraging even when I can't play, and that's probably something I wasn't very good at in high school and I think I improved on that -- learned how to do that, learned how to try and help my teammates even though I couldn't play at all.

"I learned that and just, you can question. You question, 'Why does this happen to me?' It doesn't really make any sense but God has a plan and there's a reason, although I may never understand it. But there's a plan. Just kind of coming to that realization, that helps a lot."

She played in 16 games last year as a redshirt freshman, but never played more than 16 minutes, and averaged just 6.3 per game. She finished with 16 points on the season and was shut down for the final 10 games due to knee soreness.

Luttrull wondered then if maybe she should say "the college dream is done" and just focus on her academics -- she's going to receive her bachelor's degree in Agribusiness in May and then start work toward her master's degree -- but she never felt strongly about that option.

"You just don't quit, you know?" Luttrull said. "You just don't quit -- even when it seems like you should. Because I thought about it."

She credits her family with helping her realize she should stick it out, as well as Patterson, who helped her come up with a plan for this season.

The plan included limiting Luttrull throughout the preseason, practicing every few days for about 15 minutes and then see how her knee responded.

Once games started they tried to increase it to three consecutive days of 30 minutes of practices, but her knee didn't respond well so it dropped down to two days.

She played in 10 of the team's 13 non-conference games, averaging 7.6 minutes.

Patterson made Luttrull aware that the reason she was limiting her playing time then was because she wanted her to have a better chance of being available to play when OVC games rolled around.

Luttrull only saw four minutes of action in the conference opener vs. Belmont on Dec. 31. Two days later the Redhawks were set to face Tennessee State for their third game in four days. Patterson asked Luttrull five minutes before that game if she was good to go, and she was.

The 5-foot-7 guard scored a career-high 17 points in a career-high 19 minutes off the bench. She shot 66.7 percent from the floor and made three straight 3s in the third quarter to spark the Redhawks in their 75-65 victory.

The pain came after that game, and she didn't practice the rest of the week leading up to Thursday's game at Morehead State.

She was uncertain if she could play when the team was going through warmups and when Patterson first asked if she was going to be able to help the team or if she felt like she'd hurt the team, she responded that she needed to think about it.

"She asked me again and I said, 'Give me two possessions and I'll be able to tell you,'" Luttrull said. "... You feel [the pain] but there's so much else that's going on that I can kind of just block it out. Yeah, it still hurts, but most of the time I can just kind of push it to the back burner.'"

Luttrull came into that game and scored 12 points in 12 minutes, knocking down 3 of 7 3-pointers and converting a three-point play.

She had one of the biggest shots of the game when she drained a deep 3 in the final seconds of the third quarter to pull the Redhawks within single digits. They went on to win 89-79.

"Any production that she gives us is great, but she's really my toughest player," Patterson said. "She doesn't even think twice when there's a loose ball. She just dives after it. If somebody's charging at her she steps over and takes a charge. I know her mom probably cringes every time she does it, but she just plays so hard and she gives that to our team and they feed off of it."

Luttrull laughed as she explained her mom's reaction to her taking a charge during the team's first exhibition game. She'd been listening to the game on the radio and immediately after Luttrull checked into the game she got plowed over, drawing a charge. Luttrull understood her mom Melissa's concern -- it was her first game without a knee brace since she'd suffered the injury -- but she couldn't help herself.

"I told her coach was in the locker before and she said, 'Who's going to be the first one to take a charge?'" Luttrull said, "and I'm thinking in my head, 'That's going to be me. I'm going to take a charge.'"

She jokes that her mom wants her to find another way to contribute to the team rather than putting her body on the line, but Luttrull enjoys that part of the game too much to oblige.

"It's fun. That's what gets the crowd into it," Luttrull said. "That's what gets your teammates into it -- those little things."

The sophomore has expanded her role on the team, becoming much more vocal. After she made that 3 to close out the third quarter vs. MSU she yelled to her team, "We are not going to lose this game." She didn't have to say anything against TSU, but rather waved her arms in the air toward the crowd.

Luttrull said she reflected on those moments after each game because she'd never done either of those things in a game before and asked herself, "Where'd that come from?"

"I don't know," Luttrull said with a laugh on Tuesday. "I think part of it's just adrenaline, but then part of it is just being more confident in myself and this team. I wasn't just saying that; like, I firmly believed we are not going to lose this game."

Patterson emphasized to the returners to this year's team to speak up if they feel strongly about something, and Luttrull is coming into her own with that.

"Sometimes it's really difficult for people to want to say something if they can't get out here and do everything that the team is doing -- they feel like they don't have a right," Patterson said. "But I think that the girls respect her because all the stuff that she can do and she does. When she says something they trust her and I think that's allowed her to be more comfortable being more vocal."

Luttrull hasn't played since the Morehead game. She realized during a shootaround Saturday morning that she wouldn't be able to contribute on the court against Eastern Kentucky.

The Redhawks lost that game 56-55 to snap a four-game winning streak and suffer their first conference loss, but Luttrull and her teammates are ready to try to bounce back tonight.

"I told her the other day -- because she was hurt when she couldn't play against EKU -- what she's been able to do so far has been a gift, and if we don't ever get that again it was worth it," Patterson said. "We just have to enjoy it and take it day by day and just be in the moment. She's a great kid to coach. I'm happy that she's part of our program. I'm happy that she's going to be an alum. And I hope that she can do the things that's in her heart when it comes to basketball."