SEMO outsized by Southern Indiana, start conference play with loss

The SEMO women’s basketball team was defeated by the Southern Indiana (USI) Screaming Eagles 75-37 on Friday at the Show Me Center. The Redhawks were without starting forward Amiyah Buchanan and the superior size of USI made it seemingly impossible for SEMO to get anything going in the paint.

The Eagles jumped out to a 12-4 lead, using post-play after post-play to dominate the Redhawks inside. Unable to go inside, SEMO managed to get several open looks for outside shots, but the ball would not go into the basket.

USI held a 23-10 lead after the first quarter, Redhawks head coach Rekha Patterson said the team will be able to learn something after this loss.

“Well, we learned who we want to be, we got punched in the face tonight and anytime you suffer defeat like this it's gonna stagger you and it may stagger your confidence,” Patterson said. “But you got to look yourself in the mirror and be like, we're better, I’m better and I'm gonna be better during my next opportunity.”

In the second quarter, USI continued to feed the ball inside and the height of the Eagles continued to cause problems for the Redhawks on both ends of the court. Being without Buchanan became noticeable as other SEMO post-players began to step into foul trouble and USI held a 41-19 halftime lead.

The final half of the game was the same story as the first as again the height difference made it difficult for the Redhawks on the defensive end. USI maintained a big advantage 61-24 heading into the final frame.

SEMO starts Ohio Valley Conference with a loss but Patterson said you have to have a short-term memory in this conference and they are on to Morehead State.

“Well, our coaches have already got scouting done and the way we do it, we prepare for both teams earlier in the week. So we sprinkle in little things that we need to work on and then as we get closer to game time, we cater it to our opponents,” Patterson said. “So we've been working on a little bit of Morehead, in our warm-up stuff that we do our first 45 minutes of practice, we've been incorporating that into our practice plan all week.”

SEMO faces Morehead State on Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Show Me Center.