Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team has winning streak broken by Vandals

Southeast Missouri State senior guard Allyson Bradshaw was named to the Glass City Classic all-tournament team after a career-high 21-point performance Sunday, but the women's basketball team lost to Idaho 78-62 to conclude the tournament in Toledo, Ohio.

Bradshaw, a graduate of Notre Dame Regional High School, scored all 21 points in the second half. She was 4 of 9 from 3-point range and 5 of 5 from the free-throw line.

"As a team we struggled offensively the first half, but she came in, made one and after she made that first one she kind of got on a little roll, so we started running a few more things for her," Southeast coach Ty Margenthaler said. "It's good to see because as poorly as we shot we were still down 10 with probably 13 minutes to go, still in striking distance. We just really couldn't get under that 10-point deficit. Effort-wise it was absolutely tremendous, and I'm really proud of how they fought in the game."

The Redhawks faced an early hole as the Vandals scored the first seven points of the game.

A couple of free throws by senior guard Jasmine Robinson and a 3-pointer by junior guard Olivia Hackmann cut the deficit to two. That was Hackmann's lone basket of the game as she missed her next eight attempts.

Idaho once again rattled off seven unanswered points. The Vandals led by as many as 17 points, but the Redhawks scored the final four of the first half to pull within 35-22 at the break.

"They're big and physical and they just pounded it right inside," Margenthaler said. "We went to a little zone, just to hopefully help our inside game out a little bit, and that worked for a while, but they've got tremendous shooters as well, so we tried to flip back and forth [between defenses]. ... They're just bigger, more physical and a little more skilled, and they took advantage of that inside."

Southeast was outscored 44-18 in the paint. The Vandals shot 42.9 percent from the field in the game and made 36.8 percent (7 of 19) of their 3-pointers.

The Redhawks shot 28.6 percent from the floor in the contest, but shot 43.8 percent in the second half after making just 6 of 38 attempts in the first. They shot 88.9 percent from the free-throw line.

Bradshaw scored the first five points of the second half for Southeast and made her first 3-pointer about two minutes into the second half to pull the Redhawks within 11 points.

Seven straight points by the Vandals pushed the margin to 18.

Bradshaw knocked down a pair of free throws and two 3s, and senior forward Hillary Lively hit a jumper over about a two minute span to pull Southeast within 54-44 with 10:24 remaining, which was as close as it would get.

A jumper by sophomore guard Brianna Mitchell made it an 11-point contest with 4:56 left before a 9-0 Idaho run gave the Vandals their largest lead at 20.

In addition to Bradshaw, Margenthaler thought Mitchell, who had 10 points on 5-of-12 shooting, and Lively, who had eight points, was 2 of 3 from the floor and 4 of 4 from the free-throw line and had seven rebounds, helped the Redhawks make a push in the second half.

"She got going a little bit in that second half in transition and hit a couple jumpers," Margenthaler said about Mitchell. "I was really pleased with her. We started going inside a little bit more, and Hillary Lively made a couple nice little layups down low. I thought those three really offensively were kind of a plug. Unfortunately, Erin [Bollmann] struggled offensively and Olivia [Hackmann] struggled offensively. But I was really pleased with the shots we took and the shots we got. It was just one of those unfortunate games where the ball wasn't going in for us, but we kept in it with our defense and our hustle, and it gave us a chance, but it was just one of those days where we couldn't score the ball."

Bollmann finished 1 for 8 from the field, knocking down one 3-pointer and a pair of free throws. She did have 10 rebounds.

The Redhawks split their two games in the tournament and return to Cape Girardeau with a 5-6 record.

They host Illinois-Springfield at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Show Me Center.

"I take away, and with our kids let them know that we can compete against anybody the remainder of the schedule, and going against a really good basketball team you can't have a lot of errors on the offensive end or defensive end," Margenthaler said about what he learned from Sunday's game. "You've really got to bring it, and if you don't, it's going to be tough to win, and unfortunately we had the effort, we had the hustle, but we didn't have the consistency on the offensive end and we had a couple mental errors on the defensive end."