Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team again seeks opening win vs. Alabama A&M

Southeast Missouri State women's basketall coach Ty Margenthaler believes his players will have more confidence than past years when they open their season tonight against Alabama A&M.

The Redhawks opened their season with a 76-64 win over the Bulldogs last season. They hope for the same outcome this time in a game that tips off at 6:30 p.m. at the Show Me Center.

Margenthaler expects Alabama A&M to play a similar style of basketball under second-year coach Semeka Randall, but Southeast will face different personnel.

"There's going to be a lot of new faces that we're not familiar with, a lot of junior college players that she brought in," Margenthaler said. "They're going to be a very athletic basketball team. They're going to press, they're going to fall back into a very aggressive zone defense. They'll be 80 percent zone, 20 percent man-to-man. That's what we saw against them the first time, and after going back and even watching videos from their later games in the year, they were sticking with that."

Alabama A&M returns its leading scorer, guard Brittney Strickland, from a team that went 6-23. Strickland averaged 17.2 points, 2.8 steals and 3.2 assists per game.

Guard Taylor Sippial also returns after averaging 9.4 points and 4.0 rebounds last year. Strickland and Sippial each had 10 points against the Redhawks in the last meeting.

"We've really focused this week on ourself, and we're going to have that mentality this year," Margenthaler said. "The one thing that I've done maybe a bad job of last year with the team is maybe talking too much about the opponent in preparation."

Margenthaler said his players are eager for tonight's game after getting a taste of playing outside competition in their exhibition win over Missouri Valley a week ago.

Margenthaler, who will serve the remainder of his two-game suspension for self-reported NCAA recruiting violations by the women's basketball program, said Southeast's likely starters are Yelena Rosado, Jasmine Robinson, Olivia Hackmann, Allyson Bradshaw and Connor King.

Senior forward and captain Hillary Lively will not play tonight or against Missouri on Monday as she serves a two-game suspension for a violation of team rules. She will return against St. Louis University on Nov. 21.

Freshman forward Imani Johnson had been suspended from the team for academic reasons, but she has begun to practice with the Redhawks again. Her academic situation likely will be re-evaluated on a week-by-week basis, Margenthaler said.

Assistant Heather Ezell will serve as Southeast's coach tonight in place of Margenthaler.

"This has really hurt me, really bad, to be totally honest," Margenthaler said about his suspension. "The team knows it, and we've been all great together, and it's really brought us very, very close, which I love. And I think things happen for a reason and getting through this will be a good thing. *... I have great confidence in coach Ezell and coach Cameron [Tucker] and coach [Lavesa] Glover."