Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team continues road quest vs. UTM

~ The Redhawks pursue their first true road win Saturday against the defending women's OVC tournament champion

The Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team is coming off a performance that saw the Redhawks narrowly miss their first road win of the season.

Finding that elusive road victory figures to be a difficult chore in the Redhawks' next game, a 6 p.m. tipoff Saturday against Tennessee-Martin, the defending Ohio Valley Conference tournament champion.

"They're definitely one of the top teams in our league," said first-year Southeast coach Ty Margenthaler, whose squad suffered a 60-57 overtime loss Saturday at defending OVC regular-season champion Tennessee Tech. "We'll have our hands full."

Southeast (4-16, 1-6) is 10th in the 11-team league. The Redhawks are 0-8 in true road games, although they do own a neutral-site win over Longwood.

"We're coming off a really good performance. Unfortunately we lost," Margenthaler said. "But we want to continue that type of play."

UTM (11-8, 5-1) is in second place, one game behind Eastern Illinois. The Panthers handed the Skyhawks their lone OVC loss, 70-63 on Jan. 16 in Charleston, Ill.

"They're a very talented team," Margenthaler said.

The Skyhawks are the OVC's highest-scoring squad with an average of 75.3 points per game.

UTM leads the conference in 3-point field-goal percentage at 35.2 while ranking second in overall field-goal percentage at 41.2. The Skyhawks have hit a league-best 173 3-pointers.

"They can really shoot the basketball and they can shoot it from anywhere," Margenthaler said.

UTM features the OVC's top two scorers in sophomore guards Heather Butler (21.8 points per game) and Jasmine Newsome (19.4 ppg). They are third and sixth in the league in 3-point shooting at 38.3 percent and 35.7 percent, respectively.

Butler is the reigning OVC freshman of the year, while Newsome was the MVP of last season's conference tournament. Both were first-team all-league selections as freshmen.

Butler already has become the 12th member of UTM's 1,000-point club. She reached the plateau in just 50 games, scoring double figures in each of the contests.

"They have great guard play," Margenthaler said. "It's going to be a big challenge for us defensively."

Saturday's contest is the second in a stretch that has the Redhawks playing seven of their final 10 games on the road.