Southeast Missouri State women's basketball team to visit OVC power UT-Martin

If anyone expected the four-time defending Ohio Valley Conference tournament champion University of Tennessee-Martin women's basketball team to swoon following the departure of the conference's all-time leading scorers, Heather Butler and Jasmine Newsome, they were mistaken.

The Skyhawks are again perched atop the OVC standings with a perfect 6-0 mark.

Southeast Missouri State Ty Margenthaler, whose Redhawks will visit the Skyhawks on Saturday night at the Elam Center in Martin, Tennessee, is not among those who were fooled.

"I knew they were going to be good," Margenthaler said. "Quite honestly, they might be better. They might be better than they were last year."

UTM (10-9) pulled itself over .500 for the first time this season with a 30-point defeat of Eastern Illinios on Wednesday.

The Skyhawks' closest conference margin was a 13-point win against Eastern Kentucky. Their lost four wins have been by an average margin of 25 points.

"If you go back and look at their non-conference schedule, it's probably one of the strongest schedules in the country, definitely in the mid-major," Margenthaler said. "They played probably five or six BCS schools. That's why their record was what it was, but right now they're beating teams by 20, 30 points handily, in our league."

UTM averages 81.2 ppg in conference and allows just 59.7 ppg.

"The scary thing about this team, if you look at their stats, something we struggle at, they excel so strongly at," Margenthaler said. "They shoot 41 percent from 3, they shoot 48 percent from [the field], they're averaging 81 points a game. They have the best post player in our conference, and probably the best post player in mid-major basketball as a sophomore with Ashia Jones."

Jones, who was the OVC freshman of the year last season, averages a conference-best 28.2 ppg against league opponents, and is shooting 56.8 percent and is an 82.9 percent free-throw shooter.

But the 6-foot-1 forward isn't the only offensive weapon. Mississippi State transfer Jessy Ward averages 12.5 ppg and has connected on 18 of 42 3-point attempts. Sophomore forward Tiara Caldwell chips in 9.5 points and 6.8 rebounds.

Junior forward Chelsea Roberts, senior guard Karisma Tyson and junior guard Katie Schubert are all shooting upwards of 40 percent from behind the arc in the OVC.

"They just have a better balance. They don't rely on one or two players," Margenthaler said. "Now, their one or two players were so dominant they could do that. Those two were the most consistent players I've ever witnessed, men or women, to be quite honest with you, for a long period of time. They didn't have a night off, and they played 38 minutes a game. They were just absolutely incredible.

"Now their big kid is showing up every night. Their guards are hitting shots. I've talked to a lot of coaches in the league and everybody's talking about how to go against Martin. If you zone them, they're going to eventually make some shots. If you man them, and you try to double-team [Jones], she's going to kick out. They have that inside-out game and are so consistent right now and playing with such confidence that it's very difficult. They're a very basic team, but they can be because they just know what they do."

While the Redhawks defense will have its hands full, and will try to keep UTM on its toes by switching between defenses, Southeast's offense will have to improve greatly to threaten the Skyhawks.

Southeast is averaging a league-worst 51.0 ppg, shooting 33.1 percent from the field and 21.9 percent on 3s. Margenthaler doesn't believe it's the offensive sets that his team runs that is the issue, and says 90 percent of practice time has become focused on improving the offense.

"It's just having that mentality to score," Margenthaler said. "If we were taking bad shots and rushing everything and we're just jacking threes it's a different story, but we're being more patient, we're getting the ball inside more than we ever have. We're getting drives to the rim. I believe our threes are, for the most part, open. Honestly it's just stepping up, believing that you can make it. I talked to at practice [Thursday] morning. I talked to our team about this, and it's so true, but I told them, 'Great shooters believe they're going to make a shot. Average to poor shooters hope the shot goes in.' We've got to get that, 'The shot is going to go in' [mentality]."