2021 OVC Women's Basketball Championship - First Round

3/4/2021 9:29:26 AM

#5 TENNESSEE TECH 79, #4 JACKSONVILLE STATE 64
EVANSVILLE, Ind. - Last season’s Ohio Valley Conference Basketball Championships haunted the Tennessee Tech women. Trying to overcome a grief-filled moment and coming up short with Southeast Missouri hitting a buzzer-beater in overtime held heavy in their hearts and minds. Hardly a week later, everything changed with the COVID-19 pandemic.

So with a full year of all of this weighing on the Golden Eagles, Thursday, they had enough.

Tech opened up the quarterfinal contest in the 2021 OVC Basketball Championships like a team possessed and hardly looked back as the fifth-seeded Golden Eagles took a 79-64 victory over No. 4-seed Jacksonville State, heralding its exit from the OVC in women’s basketball.

The Golden Eagles will take on UT Martin at 1 p.m. Friday in the tournament semifinals. Tech defeated the Skyhawks on the road in the only meeting this season, winning 77-73.

Tech had four players score in double-digits, led by Brock, who scored 23 points on 9-of-15 shooting. Mackenzie Coleman added 19, while Kesha Brady had 12 and Anna Jones 10. Jada Guinn, the remaining component of the starting five, was one point shy of a double-double, leading both teams with 11 rebounds to go along with nine points.

Jacksonville State’s Yamia Johnson led all scorers with 25 points, including eight of the Gamecocks’ 21 points in the third quarter. Keiara Griffin and Taylor Hawks both scored 11.
To put it kindly, the Golden Eagles were on fire in the first quarter, while Jacksonville State wasn’t. Tech knocked down nine of its 14 shots, while the only thing Jacksonville State had in nearly the first seven minutes of the game was free throws. The Gamecocks hit their first field goal of the contest at the 3:13 mark, but trailed 16-7 by that point with five of six free throws made to that point.

But Tech wasn’t letting up in the quarter as the Golden Eagles outscored JSU 23-9 in the first 10 minutes, then used a 9-0 run in the second quarter to take a 21-point lead at the seven-minute mark.

The Gamecocks were able to slice one point off of Tech’s first-quarter advantage, outscoring the Golden Eagles 22-21 in the second, but the momentum slowly started to shift in the third. After shooting 62.1 percent in the first half, Tech cooled off a bit in the third quarter as the Gamecocks warmed up. The Golden Eagles hit six of their 16 tries and was 1-for-6 from long-range.

JSU, however, started to heat up. Including Johnson’s eight points, the Gamecocks were 8-for-15 from the field, cutting Tech’s 21-point lead at its peak down to six points with 2:20 left in the quarter as Johnson hit two big 3-pointers and Imari Martin adding another.

Tech broke out of its slump in the fourth quarter. While Johnson continued to shoulder the JSU advance, scoring half of the Gamecocks’ 12 points in the final 10 minutes, JSU only knocked down five shots, while Tech was 7-for-10 from the field with Coleman scoring seven points and Brock six as the Golden Eagles outscored JSU 19-12 to secure the victory.

Where JSU’s previous M.O. against the Golden Eagles was to pound the paint, the Gamecocks opted to go for 3-pointers, but JSU hit just eight of 25 tried. The Gamecocks did work the ball inside for 30 points, but Tech actually won the battle there, collecting 46 points in the paint.

Neither team turned the ball over much, Tech seven times and nine for JSU.

#6 MURRAY STATE 67, #3 SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 64
EVANSVILLE, Ind. - The sixth-seeded Murray State women’s basketball team advanced to the semifinals of the 2020 OVC Women’s Basketball Championship with a 67-64 win over third-seeded Southeast Missouri Thursday at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana. It was not only the first postseason win under head coach Rechelle Turner, but also the first postseason win for the program as a whole since the 2015-16 season.

The Racers went down early in the game, as they were outscored by the Redhawks 19-8 in the first quarter. However, the Racers bounced back in the second and third quarters with 18 and 22 points, respectively. The third is where MSU did the majority of its damage, taking a lead early in the frame and building it to seven points by the end of the period,

The Redhawks, for their part, would not go quietly, whittling MSU’s eight-point lead with just under five minutes to go to just one with 1:20 to play. The Racers, however, did what they have done all season, made their free throws down the stretch, hitting five of eight. Terri Smith did hit a 3-pointer for SEMO with just over a second left to cut the lead to just two, forcing the Redhawks to foul Alexis Burpo with 0.1 seconds remaining. Burpo went 1-for-2 at the line, but the shots proved inconsequential as there was no time to get a shot off afterwards for SEMO, allowing Murray State to hang on for the win.

Turley led all scorers in the game with 25 points, including going 10-for-11 from the free throw line. Katelyn Young and Hannah McKay each notched a double-double in the game, marking the 10th of the season for Young and the first for McKay. Young finished the game with 14 points and 12 rebounds, while McKay notched 11 and 11. Burpo finished the night just shy of her own double-double, tallying nine points and eight rebounds.

Roshala Scott led Southeast Missouri with 22 points.