Murray State
Southeast Missouri State
Lady Racers get Tournament berth, but fall at Southeast Missouri 86-69
2/24/2005 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
The Murray State Lady Racers claimed the eighth and final berth into the O'Reilly's Ohio Valley Conference Championship Tournament tonight by virtue of Morehead State's loss to Eastern Kentucky, but couldn't enhance their position, falling at Southeast Missouri State 86-69.
Murray State will have the No. 8 seed in the tournament and will play at either Eastern Kentucky Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. CT or Southeast Missouri State on Tuesday at 7 p.m. EKU will get the top seed unless the Lady Colonels lose to Austin Peay and SEMO beats Tennessee-Martin on Saturday.
Against SEMO, the Lady Racers (9-17, 5-10 OVC) were hampered by a tough Redhawk defense, as Southeast Missouri State scored the first eight points and jumped out to a 20-4 lead, taking a 45-28 halftime lead.
In the second half, the Lady Racers went on an 11-2 run to close to within 10 points, 52-42, when senior guard Rebecca Remington hit a layup with 14:47 remaining. Murray State would not be able to get any closer.
"We started out with some early turnovers," said MSU head coach Joi Felton. "We talked about how important it is to take care of the ball on the road. It was disappointing, but give credit to SEMO. They played defense like you need to to win.
"We rebounded with them, but unfortunately, on a lot of our offensive rebounds, we couldn't convert. One positive was that we went to the offensive boards, and we need to continue to do that. A huge positive was that the rebounding was close in this game (SEMO led 48-46). The last game, they out-rebounded us badly (55-37), but here, we got to play better defense."
Murray State was led by junior forward Jessie Hirsch, who scored 17 points to go with nine rebounds. Sophomore guard Gerraca Matthews added 11 points, while freshman guard Alaina Lee -- getting her first career start with MSU -- put in 10 points (including an 8-for-10 night from the line) and grabbed five rebounds.
Remington claimed a co-game-high 10 rebounds to go with nine points and a co-game-high three steals, while freshman guard Shaleea Petty handed out a team-high three assists and senior forward Kaleena Miller grabbed five rebounds.
Southeast Missouri State (19-7, 13-2 OVC) was paced by Chandra Brown's double-double with 17 points and 10 rebounds to go with four assists. Tatiana Conceicao added 17 points to go with five rebounds and four assists, while Natalie Purcell put in 13 points and Simone Jackson had 12 points, eight rebounds and four assists.
Murray State will close out its regular-season schedule at Eastern Illinois on Saturday at 2:05 p.m.
