Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team visits Murray St. for a make-up game

~ Tonight's contest was to be played last month but was canceled due to a power outage

The Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team has a few goals that it's still looking to accomplish in its final four games of the season.

The obvious goal of earning a berth to the Ohio Valley Conference tournament is still within the Redhawks' reach as well as their chance to match or improve on their conference and overall win totals from last season.

Those goals go hand in hand for Southeast, which sits in 11th place in the OVC standings, as it fights to make it into the top eight and a spot in the conference tournament in Nashville.

"There's a lot to play for," Southeast coach Ty Margenthaler said. "Especially for our program, especially for us going on year three that we can just continue to improve every year on that -- that's of course our goals."

The Redhawks' next chance to move up in the standings -- and tie the most conference wins under Margenthaler -- comes when they face Murray State at 7 p.m. today at the CFSB Center in Murray, Ky.

"We discussed in depth, just to kind of let them know where we're at, what's going on in our league, just in case they're not aware of what's going on or they're not paying much attention to it," Margenthaler said. "I think after I told them where we're at, I think definitely saw a little spark like, 'You know what, we still have a chance, we still can do this and still can do that.'"

Tonight's game is a makeup for the Jan. 6 contest that was postponed just before game time due to a power outage on the Murray State campus.

A lot has changed for the Racers (9-15, 2-10 OVC) since then.

Their leading scorer, junior Keiona Kirby (18.3 ppg), suffered a season-ending knee injury during MSU's game against Belmont on Jan. 13, and they've had to make some adjustments.

"They're definitely a different basketball team," Margenthaler said. "They're very, very young and at times playing three or four freshmen at a time. When Kirby was in the lineup they were playing really fast, getting a lot of possessions, scoring a lot of points, shooting really freely. They've really changed. They've changed their defensive system now; they changed their offensive system now.

"They were more of a man-to-man type team, now they're playing a lot of kind of junk defense, you know. It's not something we've ever seen. It looks kind of like a 1-3-1, but it's kind of more like a matchup zone. ... Offensively they're not playing as fast, they're not shooting as many 3s. They still have the green light, but they're not getting as many possessions because they know they just don't have that depth that they can do that."

MSU averages 8.7 made 3-pointers per game and nearly 27 attempts per game.

The Racers have started three freshmen guards consistently since Kirby's injury. Taylor Porter (10.2 ppg), Janssen Starks (10.5 ppg) and Nikia Edom (6.8 ppg) all have contributed. Freshman guard Julia Fox, who averaged 10.4 ppg and was one of the three freshmen starting, also suffered a season-ending knee injury, according to the Murray Ledger and Times.

Tonight's game will be MSU's third game in five days, and Margenthaler thinks his team can use that as an advantage.

"We want to try to speed the game up if we can. We want to play fast," Margenthaler said. "We did that against SIU Edwardsville and had success with that, and we kind of want the same kind of game plan. We want to play faster. We want to get more possessions, so we can hopefully wear them down a little bit. Then on defense we want to try to be really aggressive, and we're going to pick up a little bit more than maybe we have, just to try to get more possessions."

Senior forward Patricia Mack and sophomore guard Olivia Hackman lead the Southeast offense with 9.6 ppg. Mack also averages a team-leading 9.4 rebounds per game.

The Redhawks and Racers will be playing the only game in the OVC tonight. A win would move Southeast (8-17, 4-8 OVC) into a tie for ninth in the conference standings, a half game out of eighth.