Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team struggles after break in loss to Belmont

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team's Ohio Valley Conference opener quickly took a turn for the worse in the second half against Belmont on Thursday at the Curb Event Center.

After facing a single-figure deficit at halftime, the game spiraled out of control for the Redhawks, and the Bruins (4-10, 1-0 OVC) rolled to a 62-39 victory.

"We came out in the second half and I saw it, and they saw it, and everybody that watched the game probably saw it -- we got a little frustrated with ourselves," Southeast coach Ty Margenthaler said. "The thing I really do believe about this team is they wanted it so bad that they're trying to get it all at once instead of just letting it come. That's when I thought instead of going inside-out, we took some quick shots. Nobody was being selfish, but we were just taking quick shots. We're missing and then of course that would hurt our defense, and then we started to get a little soft on the defensive end. Really from that 15-minute mark in the second half it just kind of went from 10 or 11 to 20-something, and then it was just kind of tough to come back."

Southeast trailed 28-21 at halftime against the host Bruins, and and trimmed it to five points with 18 minutes, 27 seconds remaining.

Belmont then used a spurt of 10 unanswered points, including back-to-back 3s by Sierra Jones and Taylor Mills, to make it a 40-25 margin that the Redhawks never recovered from.

Southeast could never pull within 10 points of Belmont the remainder of the way and were outscored 34-18 in the second half to fall to 7-7 and 0-1 in the OVC.

"We just had a bad game," Southeast senior guard Allyson Bradshaw said. "We talked about that in the locker room. It's not make or break for us. We all know that's the worst it's been for us probably all year so far."

The Redhawks shot 26.6 percent from the field (17 of 64) and only made seven field goals in the final 20 minutes of the game. They made 1 of 19 3-point attempts (5.3 percent) and were 4 of 10 from the free-throw line.

"We got a whipping on the road," Margenthaler said. "It's our first conference game, but I told them it's just one game. We won't ever get Belmont back. The one thing that I have stressed to this team for the first time since I've been here is I want them to understand that every game is very, very important. It's not make or break, but we're not going to get these games back, and so you have to approach every game like it's the championship game."

Southeast led by as much as four points when it was 10-6 with 9:48 left in the first half, but the Bruins took a 15-14 lead on a 3-point play by Jones with 5:57 remaining in the first and closed out the half with a 13-7 run.

"The first half I thought we really weren't affected by their size at all," Margenthaler said. "I thought we did a great job because we had really good energy on the ball and good energy down low, but the second half they definitely went down low to their big freshman."

Belmont's 6-foot-3 freshman center Sally McCabe finished with 10 points -- eight in the second half. Sophomore forward Frankie Joubran led the Bruins with 14 points and 10 rebounds, and Jones had 13 points on 4 of 6 shooting.

"He really just wanted us to increase our toughness, and he definitely mentioned accountability for what we were doing wrong and what we were doing right," junior forward Erin Bollmann said about Margenthaler's postgame message. "We were bickering a lot during the game, so he was just trying to get our heads together because we were just not coming together at the very end."

Senior guard Jasmine Robinson finished with 10 points to pace the Redhawks. Bollmann had six points and 10 rebounds, while junior forward Connor King finished with a career-high 14 rebounds.

The Redhawks face Tennessee State at 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Gentry Center in Nashville.

"It would've been really nice to win it to show us that we are here and that SEMO is supposed to be taken seriously, but we're going to use this as a way to come back and be ready for every other game," Bollmann said.