Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team begins 2nd half of OVC schedule

The Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team begins the second half of its conference schedule Saturday, and for the Redhawks to have any chance to secure a spot in the eight-team Ohio Valley Conference tournament the next eight games are dire.

The Redhawks enter Saturday's 4:30 p.m. contest at Austin Peay with a conference record of 1-7 and are second to last in the 12-team OVC standings. The Governors (7-14, 4-4 OVC) are tied with Belmont for the final two spots currently, with Southeast three games back.

"We know where we're at in the conference standings and with our record and what not, and not trying to make it too big of a deal because we have eight games left, but the biggest message that I've come to the team with and am going to stay strong with the remainder of the year is our attitude," Southeast coach Ty Margenthaler said. "Not saying that we have a bad attitude, but we have to have a positive attitude. An attitude that we believe that we can win each and every game. ... We need to go back and think about when we were winning some of those close games in the non-conference, and how we felt and think about all the positives. Do not think about anything negative because once you start getting that negative in your mind, all it's going to do is it's going to affect you and it's going to hurt you, and we can't be at that point right now."

Southeast is coming off a 96-55 loss to conference leader UT-Martin, which is off to an 8-0 start, last Saturday. Austin Peay was defeated 87-67 by SIU Edwardsville, which is second in the standings at 8-1, on Wednesday night. The Govs have wins over Eastern Kentucky, Jacksonville State, Belmont and Eastern Illinois, and lost to Tennessee Tech, Tennessee State and Morehead State.

"They're a good basketball team, and they've had some good wins," Margenthaler said. "They've got really good size, and they've got probably one of the best point guards in the league on their team."

Junior point guard Tiasha Gray is second in the conference in scoring, averaging 20.8 ppg in OVC games, and pulls down an average of eight rebounds. She's averaging 3.48 steals per game, which is fifth in the country.

"On the offensive end she can really shoot the basketball, and she can drive it," Margenthaler said. "If you're really tight on her she's very creative and handles the ball really well. She can get into the lane and either take it all the way or she'll pull up for the jump shot. She's very, very good in transition. We talked a lot about that, because I feel our defensive transition hasn't been really, really good of late, and that's something that she's really good at. She likes to get the outlet pass and take it. If she's got the lane, she'll continue to go all the way.

"On the defensive end I think she's got like 67 steals on the season, which is a lot. She takes a lot of chances. She'll gamble a lot. If you throw the ball inside she'll leave her player completely and go and try to get a steal, or she'll shortcut a lot of things on screens. So our passing, whenever we're going to pass to whoever she's guarding, we've got to be really aware because she'll like to take a lot of chances on that."

Senior guard Kristen Stainback and 6-foot-3 sophomore center Tearra Banks average 13.3 and 12.6 points, respectively. Stainback has made 19 3-pointers in conference play, while Gray has made 18.

Meanwhile the Redhawks continue to struggle offensively, and only junior forward Erin Bollmann averages double figures in conference play with 10.8 ppg.

Southeast spent its extended break between games adding wrinkles to the offense that will allow for getting shots for the player with a hot hand on a given night.

"What we've done just this week is we just put in two more little plays that if our posts are doing well, like for instance Erin Bollmann really played well against Martin, so just something that we can go to her for," Margenthaler said. "Just maybe a specific player or two, because we have the sets, we have the offense -- just now we're in the situation where whoever's playing well that game, whether maybe it's Olivia [Hackmann] or Ally [Bradshaw], we've just got to keep going to them until they stop it. That's the kind of stuff that we've kind of talked about as a team and tried to put in this week."