Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team falls to Belmont

~ The Redhawks dropped their OVC opener Tuesday

The Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team trailed by 17 points with 8 minutes, 30 seconds left in its conference opener before freshman guard Brianna Mitchell helped spark a comeback.

Mitchell scored 12 points in 11 minutes off the bench and was part of a 14-5 Southeast run that started with 3 minutes, 49 seconds to go that closed the Bruins' lead to 73-72 with 1:12 remaining.

The Redhawks never regained a lead, though, and opened their Ohio Valley Conference schedule with an 81-74 loss to Belmont (4-11, 1-1) on Tuesday afternoon at the Show Me Center.

Mitchell hit Southeast's first 3-pointer of the game with 8:03 to play and assisted on Patricia Mack's 3-pointer 24 seconds later to cut the Bruins' lead to nine. Belmont extended its lead back to 12 before Mitchell made two free throws that started the run.

Southeast Missouri State forward Hillary Lively scores despite a hand in the face by Belmont’s Blair Bryce during the first half Tuesday at the ’Show Me Center. (Adam Vogler)

"She's our point guard, so we feed off of her," Mack said about Mitchell. "The energy she brought today was phenomenal, and she needs to keep bringing that every game."

Mitchell came up with two steals that led to points for Southeast and hit 5 of 6 free throws down the stretch, but it wasn't enough to secure a win.

The Redhawks hung with Belmont most of the first half before being outscored 12-4 over the final four minutes of the half. Southeast trailed 40-27 at the break.

Southeast missed several layups in the first half, was 0 of 5 from behind the arc and shot 35.3 percent overall, while the Bruins made 4 of 9 3-pointers and shot 55.6 percent overall.

"The frustrating thing about it is we did a bad job defending one-on-one," Southeast coach Ty Margenthaler said. "They had a lot of direct drives to the basket; they had a lot of baseline drives. Our defense is built to not give up baseline drives, not to give direct drives, and those two areas really were glaring. ... They came in and shot really well and they outplayed us."

Southeast Missouri State guard Jordan Hunter shoots over Belmont center Blair Bryce.

Inconsistencies in scoring hampered the Redhawks. Starting guard Jordan Hunter went 0 of 5 from the field and did not score. Allyson Bradshaw, who was coming off a career-high 19 points against Missouri State, finished with nine points -- all in the second half -- on 2 of 7 shooting.

"They're really good basketball players, but for us to be really successful our top players have to be really good every night," Margenthaler said. "That's just the way any team would go, and right now we have a little bit of a roller coaster -- up and down a little bit -- but that's something that all we can do is get in the gym and work on and talk to and keep believing and those things.

"It's very difficult when Jordan goes 0 for 5 and Ally didn't shoot as well as she would like to, but again, they're very good basketball players. I have confidence in them. We're going to continue to run with them, but for us to be successful they need to play well."

Southeast also dealt with replacing true freshman Brittany Harris in the starting lineup. Harris, from Dexter, Mo., quit the team after Christmas but still is enrolled at Southeast. Margenthaler attributed Harris' departure from the team to her wanting to focus on academics and not anything to do with a problem with the coaching staff or players.

Harris had started the last four games and had played in each of Southeast's 13 games before Tuesday. She averaged 3.1 points and 3.5 rebounds per game.

"She's going into nursing. She knows it's a really big demand and commitment, and just quite honestly I believe she just didn't realize how difficult it was to be a Division I basketball player and a student," Margenthaler said. "As a coach, selfishly, it's tough because she's a really good player, but I'm happy for her and want her to do well."

Hillary Lively and Connor King stepped up in Harris' absence. Lively scored six points and had four rebounds while King started and finished with eight points and three rebounds.

"It hurts us a little bit just because she was starting and she was probably one of our leading offensive rebounders from the post area," Wright said. "That just means somebody else has to step up. We're definitely going to miss her, but there's nothing we can do about her missing, so somebody else will just have to step up and take her role."

Southeast's record dropped to 4-10 and 0-1 in the OVC. The Redhawks face Austin Peay in a doubleheader Saturday in Clarksville, Tenn. The women's game starts at 5:15 p.m. followed by the men's game at 7:30 p.m.

"We just have to start breaking some things down and just take it game by game," Margenthaler said. "Don't look down the road. Our focus right now is getting better and beating Austin Peay. Those are the two things because our goal is to get to the conference tournament. That's really important for us. It's something that this team needs to do, and it's something our program needs to do as well."