Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team unable to put together OVC streak

Southeast Missouri State women's basketball coach Ty Margenthaler spent several minutes following the Redhawks' Ohio Valley Conference game against SIU Edwardsville on Tuesday night throwing different questions at his players.

The fourth-year coach was seeking answers about problems that have lingered around the team all season, and were present in their 60-48 loss at the Show Me Center.

"That's why I was in the locker room [for awhile] with the team, just asking, 'What needs to be done? Why can't we come consistent? Why can't we be there every day in practice? Why can't we come to shootaround and communicate? Why can't we be ready to play?'" Margenthaler said. "That's on me, but I know what I bring every single day."

The Redhawks fell to 8-12 and 1-6 in conference play while the Cougars improved to 11-9 and 6-1 in the OVC, extending their winning streak to six.

Southeast's defense limited the Cougars to 14 points below their conference average and held SIUE's leading scorer Shronda Butts to just eight points, but the Redhawks struggled on the offensive end as they have all season.

The Redhawks were 20 of 61 from the field, 4 of 19 from 3-point range and 4 of 9 from the line.

"Defensive end's fine. It's the offensive end," Margenthaler said. "We're not clicking together. We're not working together consistently. At times we are, but not for the 40 minutes. We've got to be tougher. In my opinion, I strongly feel it's a mental thing. It's not a physical thing. It's mental toughness.

"I challenged our team before the game. I said, 'I'm really excited about this ballgame because this game is a mental game. It's not a physical game. I want to see if this team is ready to take that next step and win two really good ballgames in a row.' And we showed tonight that we're not."

Southeast trailed by as many as nine in the first half. After falling behind 18-9 with 9 minutes, 41 seconds to go before the break the Redhawks used a 6-0 run to pull within three points.

Junior guard Olivia Hackmann knocked down a pair of free throws then blocked two shots on the defensive end that caused the bench to erupt in cheers. Junior forward Connor King and senior forward Hillary Lively got easy baskets on the next two possessions to make it 18-15 with 6:23 before half.

The Cougars pushed the lead back to eight, but Southeast closed out the half on an 8-2 run that cut it to 25-23 at half.

SIUE was 6 of 8 from the field in the first 8:17 of the half, but were 2 of 20 over the rest of the half.

Junior forward Erin Bollmann scored 10 seconds into the second half to tie it and her jumper a minute and a half later gave the Redhawks their only lead of the game at 27-26.

The Cougars then used a 13-3 spurt that gave them a 39-30 edge with 12:26 left.

"We have good spurts and bad spurts, and when we had our bad spurts it hurt us," senior guard Jasmine Robinson said. "When we had our good spurts, it brought us back in this game. I think that was the difference in this game. We couldn't keep it together the whole time."

The Redhawks pulled within four points on a 3-pointer by freshman guard Hannah Noe with 8:59 left, but it was as close as they'd get.

"The only time our energy was lost was in like the last 10 minutes," Robinson said. "That was our fault. We didn't keep it like we was supposed to, and that's why I said those spurts come in. We kept getting down and couldn't bring it back."

Bollmann said that just how the practices leading up to their lone conference win against Tennessee Tech on Saturday were great, the practices leading up to Tuesday's loss were lackluster.

"It's always a rollercoaster with us," Bollmann said. "Like [Robinson] said, consistency is so key. We just need to figure it out, and if we don't then we're going to keep losing games."

Bollmann finished with 14 points and seven rebounds and Robinson had 12 points to lead Southeast. SIUE had four players score double figures: Tierney Austin had 12, Donshel Beck had 11 and Micah Jones and Gwen Adams had 10 apiece.

Southeast travels to UT Martin on Saturday for an OVC doubleheader. The women's teams face of at 4 p.m. with the men's game to follow.

"It's going to be very difficult to win a game in our conference, in Division I, when we score 48 points, when there's not a ton of energy for the 40 minutes of the basketball game," Margenthaler said. "It just makes it very difficult. And again, we've got to figure that out because it's getting close to February and the clock's ticking."