Southeast Missouri State women's basketball falls to UC Riverside, goes winless in UTEP Thanksgiving tourney

The Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team lost both its games at the UTEP Thanksgiving Classic hosted by the University of Texas-El Paso, but coach Rekha Patterson believes that the experience her team got from the two-day tournament was invaluable.

The Redhawks dropped to 4-3 on the season with an 85-67 loss to UC Riverside on Saturday night. They opened the tournament with a 65-64 loss to Idaho State on Friday night.

"I want our young ladies to want to have this type of experience again because the next time it'll happen it'll be in the conference tournament where you've got that quick turnaround," Patterson said. "Now the conference tournament you're going to be a little more familiar with your opponent because you'll have already played them once, but it was good for that."

Southeast led once in Saturday's contest at 9-8 with 6 minutes left in the first quarter. The Redhawks trailed 21-16 at the end of the first and 46-37 at halftime.

UCR outscored Southeast 24-11 in the third quarter to take a commanding 70-48 lead into the fourth.

Southeast outscored the Highlanders 19-15 in the final 10 minutes.

"We won the fourth quarter, so I'll take that, and our young ladies did not quit. They did not quit," Patterson said. "They continued to fight, they continued to play with pride. We needed the ball to bounce in for us a little bit more than what happened tonight. We executed things and we got shots that we wanted, so going forward we can use that to our advantage."

Southeast shot 35.7 percent from the field and was jut 6 of 25 from 3-point range. The Redhawks made 11 of 16 free throws.

Senior guard Olivia Hackmann led Southeast with 21 points.

Senior forward Erin Bollmann had 16 points, on 7-of-15 shooting, and 12 rebounds in 28 minutes off the bench.

UCR shot 45.7 percent from the floor and knocked down 10 of 20 shots from beyond the arc, 7 of which came in the first half. The Highlanders were 11 of 12 from the free-throw line.

"They run a motion with no rules and if you switch then they do this and if you don't switch then they look for this," Patterson said, "and they've got players, basically all five on the floor, who can post up, and they've got basically all five who can shoot the perimeter shot, so it makes it really difficult to defend their actions. They are athletic, they're big, and they sort of played different today than they played the night before. I think they were a little disappointed in that result."

Brittany Crain, a 5-foot-8 senior guard who was the Big West Conference Player of the Year last season, had 28 points to pace the Highlanders. She knocked down 5 of 8 3s and 10 of 17 FGs to go along with 11 rebounds.

"She can flat-out shoot, and they look for her," Patterson said. "There was a couple times tonight that we did a poor job of having a hand up, and you can't do that to someone who can shoot it so well."

Rejane Verin, a 6-1 junior forward who transferred from UNLV, where she was the Mountain West Conference Freshman of the Year in 2013, had 24 points on 9-of-16 shooting along with seven rebounds and eight assists.

Idaho State

Southeast held a two-point lead in the final minute of its game against Idaho State on Friday night.

The Redhawks had a chance to extend their lead but missed a pair of shots on their final possession and the Bengals came up with a defensive rebound and called a timeout with 23 seconds left.

Southeast fouled with 14 and 12 seconds left, and with another foul to give planned to foul once more, but the ball ended up in the hands of Isabel Vara de Rey in the closing seconds and she knocked down the game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer to give ISU a 65-64 victory over Southeast.

"We had three fouls to give, so what I told the young ladies is we'll give the first one under 20 and then we'd give the next one under 15, and then we were planning to give the third one under 8," Patterson said, "but they threw a bad pass and it basically went to half-court and then from there it was a scramble, and from that scramble they made two passes and a young lady was wide open and she knocked down a 3-pointer to win it."

It was only the third 3-pointer of the game for the Bengals and only trey of the second half for ISU.

Southeast held a 22-15 lead after one quarter and 44-30 advantage at halftime.

The Redhawks were outscored 20-9 in the third to put the Bengals up 50-43 heading into the final 10 minutes.

They faced their largest deficit at 56-46 with 8:12 remaining before retaking the lead at 57-56 with an 11-0 run over the next 3:12 that featured a pair of 3s by sophomore guard Hannah Noe and a 3 by sophomore guard Ashton Luttrull.

"We had a tough third quarter again," Patterson said. "Those third quarters are starting to hurt us a little bit. But we talked about one possession at a time. We talked about executing on offense and looking for certain things and then coming down we had to limit them to one shot. I thought we did really good on the boards, and we gave ourselves a chance to win against a really good team."

Southeast shot 33.8 percent from the floor and made 7 of 22 3-point attempts. The Redhawks were just 13 of 23 from the free-throw line.

Redshirt freshman forward Imani Johnson led the Redhawks with 15 points on 5-of-11 shooting and eight rebounds in 17 minutes off the bench. Bollmann had 14 points on 5-of-8 shooting and six rebounds.

Hackmann had 11 points, five rebounds and three blocks, but she shot just 3 of 19 from the floor.

Freshman guard Adrianna Murphy averaged 5.5 assists in the Redhawks' two games. She started both in place of injured starting point guard Bri Mitchell.

Southeast remains on the road for its next three games of the season. The Redhawks travel to Missouri for a 7 p.m. game Wednesday. They play at Wichita State at 12:05 p.m. Friday.