Bench players fill in well for foul-troubled starters

~ Whitney and Blunt missed large chuncks of the first half Saturday.

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. -- Freshmen Rochelle Ikeni and Lauren Sharpe scored a combined zero points Saturday in Southeast Missouri State's 70-54 win at Austin Peay.

Their contribution?

"It was huge," Redhawks coach John Ishee said.

Ikeni and Sharpe were pressed into action at the end of the first half when senior Missy Whitney and junior Rachel Blunt ended up on the bench together for the final eight-plus minutes.

Whitney, Southeast's leading rebounder at 6 foot 2 and second-leading scorer, picked up her second foul with 15 minutes, 29 seconds to play and the Redhawks leading 5-2. Junior forward Crysta Glenn, a junior college transfer who is no stranger to playing time in her first season, stepped into the lineup while Whitney sat out the rest of the half.

Blunt, a 6-footer and Southeast's fourth-leading scorer, picked up her second foul with 8:52 to go in the half and the score tied 14-14.

Blunt joined Whitney on the bench for the rest of the half, and Southeast still went to the locker room with a 29-24 lead.

"I thought the difference in the game was the last 10 minutes of the half," Ishee said, "when we played a defense we never play with kids who have never played it. We disrupted them with that."

Ikeni, who came in averaging 4 minutes per game, was surprised to get called upon with nearly 9 minutes to go in the half.

"At first, I was like 'OK,' and then you get the adrenaline going and then you just go to work," Ikeni said. "I just wanted to play good defense and rebound."

Ikeni, 5-10, held her own playing in the middle of Southeast's impromptu 2-3 zone against 6-2 Kellea Reaves. She drew one foul on the defensive end.

"We practice the 2-3 two possessions a day just in case we get in extreme foul trouble," Ishee said. "50 [Janay Armstrong] and 55 [Reeves] are so big, we wanted to make sure we did a good job defending them."

The zone helped keep Austin Peay's big women in check to close out the half, as the Lady Govs had possessions that ended with an offensive foul, a traveling call, a 3-seconds violation and two turnovers other than the three steals that Sharpe had a hand in.

Sharpe, 5-11, made two steals and deflected another entry pass playing primarily one of the baseline wing positions in the zone.

"I just wanted to go in and make a contribution, and do something positive," Sharpe said. "I wasn't used to playing the lower line [of the zone]. I just had to play stronger than I am. At least try to."

Sharpe, who scored eight points in her lone start this season in a loss at Purdue, was 0-for-2 from the field Saturday. Ikeni took no shots.

"I should've shot it when I had an open shot down here," she said.

But scoring wasn't the main focus. Sonya Daugherty, who also dropped down to the baseline on the zone, teamed with Glenn, Tarina Nixon and Tierra Johnson to handle the scoring on a 13-7 run that closed out the first half for Southeast.

"It was a credit to Rochelle Ikeni and Lauren Sharpe working hard," Ishee said. "Just the fact you have two freshmen on the floor who have hardly played. That was a team win for us."