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CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. – With nine minutes remaining, Southeast Missouri held a six-point lead over the defending Missouri Valley Conference champion, but Missouri State rallied to down the Redhawks 69-55 on Friday night.
The Redhawks fall to 5-7 after their second-straight loss. The Lady Bears are 7-4.
Southeast opened the game with the first nine points as
Kara Wright made a layup and followed with a three-pointer on the following possession.
Patricia Mack made a layup and
Bailie Roberts hit a jumper to give Southeast its biggest lead of the night.
A 9-2 spurt by MSU cut made it an 11-9 ballgame with 16:31 remaining in the opening frame. Undeterred, the Redhawks extended their lead to 22-16 at the 10:54 mark.
The Lady Bears took their first lead of the night on the strength of a 12-0 run that lasted over five minutes and made it 28-22. The contest bogged down the rest of the half as the teams scored only five combined points the last four minutes and change. The Lady Bears took a 30-25 lead into halftime.
A 10-2 Southeast run to open the second half put the Redhawks on top 35-32 at the 15:14 mark of the second half. Roberts started the run with a transition jumper. After MSU hit two free throws, the Redhawks scored eight-straight points with Mack and
Olivia Hackmann contributing four apiece.
An offensive rebound and put back by Mack made it 46-40 Southeast with 9:25 left on the clock, but that's where MSU put turned the tables.
The Lady Bears scored 10-straight points to take the lead back at 50-46. Roberts cut the deficit to two points twice, making a pair of free throws and hitting a jumper to make it 52-50 with 6:13 showing on the clock.
The Lady Bears followed eight-straight points to make it a 60-50 ballgame with 4:32 left. Southeast never got any closer than nine points as MSU outscored the Redhawks 29-9 in the final 9:25.
“I was extremely excited to play a great team like Missouri State,” Southeast head coach
Ty Margenthaler said. “We battled for 40 minutes and both teams made runs. We went up by six and they amped it up and wore us down. Their big players outmanned our players and that was really the key to this game.”
Mack led Southeast with 12 points and 10 rebounds, notching her fifth career double-double and second of the 2012-13 campaign. That is also the junior's sixth-straight game with 10 or more rebounds. Wright made her second-straight start and poured in 11 points, her second-straight double figure scoring output. Roberts was also in double digits, finishing with 10 points.
MSU's Whitney Edie tallied 21 points off the bench to lead all scorers while Christiana Shorter tallied 15 points and a game-high 14 rebounds.
The Lady Bears had a decisive 62-35 rebounding advantage and made 37.1 percent of their shots compared to the Redhawks' 31.7 percent mark. MSU went 5-of-14 from beyond the arc while Southeast made only one of its 13 attempts from three-point range. Southeast forced MSU into 21 turnovers while committing 15 of its own.
The Redhawks are off until Dec. 31 when they open Ohio Valley Conference play at Belmont.
