Southeast Missouri State women's basketball rallies late, gets game winner in final seconds at Tennessee Tech

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- The Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team was huddled up during its timeout with 23.9 seconds remaining when senior forward Erin Bollmann turned to coach Rekha Patterson and asked, "Coach, you want us to crash?"

Patterson simply responded with, "Absolutely."

With her team trailing by one on the road, and flashbacks of a recent one-point loss at Eastern Kentucky popping into her head, there was no doubt she wanted all of her players crashing the boards if the initial shot that'd been drawn up didn't fall.

After the timeout, junior guard Bri Mitchell drove right and her shot skipped off the backboard to Bollmann on the other side. Without missing a beat, Bollmann jumped up and laid it in off the glass in one motion with 7.8 seconds to give the Redhawks their first lead of the game and send them to a 60-57 win over Tennessee Tech on Saturday night at the Eblen Center.

The winning shot came only after Southeast erased a double-figure deficit late in the fourth quarter.

"While I was in the air I was thinking, 'Why am I not landing? I should land and then go up for the layup,'" Bollmann said with a laugh, "but I guess I decided with my athleticism to just put it back up. I was just feeling the game. I feel like the hardest layups to make are the wide open ones, so maybe that's my problem. But throughout the game I just tried to be more and more focused and I think that's why I was making shots."

Southeast trailed by as many as 13 points, a deficit the Redhawks faced with 6 minutes, 12 seconds remaining.

The Golden Eagles held a double-digit advantage up until Mitchell hit a pair of free throws with 3:27 left.

Bollmann, who entered the contest shooting 37.8 percent from the free-throw line, knocked down two to cut the gap to 56-50. Mitchell then came up with a steal before junior guard Ashton Luttrull was fouled hard and her foul shots cut it to four with 3 minutes left.

Mitchell brought the Redhawks within two before TTU's Hannah Goolsby split a pair of free throws -- the Golden Eagles' only points of the final 6:12 of the game -- to make it a three-point game with 2:26 to play.

Bollmann -- who finished with 21 points on 9-of-17 shooting, eight rebounds and four steals -- knocked down a jumper to cut it to one before hitting her game winner.

But it took Mitchell to make sure that held up as the game-winning shot.

TTU took a timeout with 7.8 left, and just before the Golden Eagles were set to inbound the ball Patterson used her final timeout.

She was hesitant, wondering if she should save it in case they got the rebound or in case TTU scored, but her assistant coaches advised her to take it and discuss the defense once more.

The Redhawks expected TTU star Samaria Howard to get the ball, but that never happened. The ball was inbounded to Goolsby on the left wing. She dribbled to the right, guarded by Deja Jones, and as she turned away from the basket to make a pass to Howard, Mitchell snuck in and tipped the ball away for a steal and was quickly fouled.

"We felt like 33 [Howard] was going to get the ball, and we wanted to put ourselves in a position where whatever she came off of we want to switch and make her take tough shots," Patterson said. "I don't think that happened, but I think Bri made a play and player's make plays."

Mitchell sank both of her free throws with 2.5 seconds left, and Howard's half-court heave was off the mark as Southeast improved to 5-1 in the Ohio Valley Conference and 12-7 overall.

Mitchell, who finished with 12 points, was disappointed in her performance earlier in the game. She shot 2 of 9 from the floor and finished 8 of 8 from the free-throw line.

"I was just happy," Mitchell said of the steal. "The team, my coaches -- I was getting down on myself and they picked me up."

The Redhawks trailed 19-13 after the first quarter and were down 39-28 at halftime.

Southeast turned the ball over eight times in the first half, which the Golden Eagles turned into 16 points. They didn't score another point off a Redhawk turnover the rest of the game.

Southeast faced a 51-41 deficit going into the final 10 minutes of the contest.

Patterson likened the way the game went to the way practice went a couple days ago.

"Our energy was really low to start," Patterson said. "We weren't communicating, we weren't playing hard, we weren't playing together. We were just going through the motions. I taught a new drill called 'Perfection Drill.' There's 30 seconds on the clock and you've got to try to work it down to zero. You've got three shots, but the offense is trying to score during that time. If they score it resets. If you give up middle penetration it resets. If you get an offensive rebound, it resets.

"And at the very last second, there's 7.8 seconds -- they were in that same position the other day in practice. But our energy was low until we got to that really competitive drill. Once it got really competitive we started competing and playing hard and tough, and every possession mattered, and I think that that part of practice helped us this fourth quarter."

Southeast shot just 29 percent from the floor in the victory and were 2 of 22 from 3-point range. Forward Imani Johnson, who finished with 10 points, hit both triples, including one with 4:13 left that sparked the 15-1 Southeast run to close out the game.

The Redhawks finished 22 of 27 from the free-throw line, including 15 of 18 in the second half. TTU (5-14, 1-5 OVC) attempted just eight free throws, making five.

"I felt like us keeping them off the free-throw line was huge, and then if we could get there [it'd be huge,]" Patterson said. "I thought it was going to be hard to get there, but if we did get there we needed to make our free throws, and those young ladies stepped up and they hit them. They did the work."

Southeast returns to action on Wednesday with an 8 p.m. game at SIU Edwardsville.

Maybe by then Patterson and company will be able to believe what they accomplished against TTU.

"No," Patterson said with a smile when asked if she could believe it. "[We shot] 29 percent. Like nothing could go right. But they found a way to persevere. They found a way to never quit. And gosh, this feels really good."