OTAHKIANS ESTABLISH MOMENTUM FOR TOURNEY

Southeast Missouri State University's women's basketball team ended the regular season with a victory and assured itself of being able to carry some momentum into the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.

The Otahkians broke a two-game losing streak Saturday night by pulling away late for an 81-61 triumph over visiting Morehead State, which had a four-game winning streak snapped.

Southeast improved to 14-12 overall and 9-7 in OVC play as the Otahkians wound up fourth in the nine-team league. The Otahkians will host fifth-place Tennessee-Martin Tuesday night in the first round of the OVC tourney.

Morehead State (9-18, 5-11) finished in a sixth-place tie and also qualified for the eight-team conference tournament.

"It feels good to go into the tournament with a win," said Southeast coach Ed Arnzen. "We've been on our heels for a while and we needed to push somebody over the cliff."

Sophomore guard Tiffany Melis led the Otahkians offensively as she scored a career-high 18 points, 13 coming in the second half.

Lori Chase scored 16 points and pulled down 11 rebounds. Also scoring in double figures were LaShelle Porter with 13 points and Pam Iversen with 12. Porter came up with five steals while Iversen contributed four assists.

Travece Turner paced MSU with 13 points and Jody Sizemore added 12.

The Otahkians trailed only once all game at 3-2 in the opening moments but until the late going Southeast could never totally shake the Lady Eagles, who entered the contest as one of the OVC's hottest teams.

Southeast's biggest first-half lead was 33-20 after a Christine Rathke 3-pointer with 5:05 remaining. But MSU closed the period with a 12-4 run to pull within 37-32 at the break.

MSU closed to within four points twice early in the second half. Southeast surged back ahead by 11, but the Lady Eagles rallied again and were within 65-59 with just under four minutes to go.

Then the Otahkians used their defense to help seal the victory. After Chase hit one of two free throws to make it 66-59, Southeast came up with three quick steals and converted all of them into breakaway layups -- by Porter, Veronica Benson and Melis to go ahead 72-59 with three minutes left.

After that, it was just a matter of what the final score would be. And the Otahkians made it an even 20-point margin when Rathke tossed in a shot from about 35 feet at the buzzer.

"The 20-point win is not indicative of how the game went," Arnzen said. "We had the three steals late that we converted into layups and that really allowed us to pull away."

Now the Otahkians will begin preparing for Tuesday's opening-round OVC Tournament game against Tennessee-Martin, which Southeast handled with relative ease in both regular-season meetings.

But Arnzen knows the Skyhawks will be coming to Cape Girardeau with plenty of momentum of their own after Saturday's stunning upset of regular-season champion Tennessee Tech, which denied the Eaglettes a perfect conference record.

"Who would have thought Martin would beat Tech tonight," said Arnzen. "Anything can happen in the tournament. We're just anxious to get started with it."