Otahks pummel Samford 90-41

Home was indeed sweet for Southeast Missouri State University's women Saturday night.

The Otahkians, who had been on the road or at neutral sites for four straight games and had not played a home contest since Nov. 24, celebrated their return to the Show Me Center with a 90-41 blowout of Samford.

Southeast, which broke a two-game losing streak, improved to 6-3 while Samford, located in Birmingham, Ala., fell to 1-5.

"It was a good win for us," said Southeast coach Ed Arnzen. "We had lost two in a row and it's our last game before the break. I think it was terribly important not only to win, but win going away and we were able to do that.

"I thought our defensive effort, as far as sustaining it, was our best of the year. We knew coming in that they had a lot of turnovers and we thought we could force quite a bit of turnovers. We also shot the ball well from three and we did a good job on the boards."

The Otahkians actually sizzled from 3-point range, connecting on 10 of 14 attempts.

Lori Chase, a junior forward who is the Otahkians' leading scorer and a returning first-team all-Ohio Valley Conference selection, connected on all three of her 3-point attempts on her way to 13 points.

Chase, who before this season had featured primarily an inside game, has also taken her play outside this year and the results have been impressive. Chase, who was four of 16 on 3-pointers last season, is now 12 of 24 from beyond the arc this year.

"I told Lori last spring before she went home that I wanted her to work on her three and now she has the green light," said Arnzen.

For Chase, those were some welcome words.

"Coach told me to step out my game a little bit because people were going to collapse on me," she said. "I'm very confident shooting threes. I've been doing it since high school but I didn't know if I should do it here."

Senior center Pam Iversen scored 13 points and grabbed 10 rebounds as the Otahkians controlled the boards by a 46-31 count. Chase added eight rebounds and guard Veronica Benson had seven.

"We watched film and it didn't look like they boxed out real well," said Iversen, who moved into 10th place in career rebounds at Southeast. "We thought we could crash the boards."

Tiffany Melis matched Chase in nailing all three of her 3-point attempts as she scored 11 points. The junior is now tied for seventh on the school's career 3-point list.

Everyone involved

Benson, Tisa Thomas and freshman Andrea Koeper all added eight points for Southeast. All 12 Otahkians played at least nine minutes and all 12 scored at least three points.

"It's nice to be able to get everybody into the game and let them play quite a bit," Arnzen said. "You don't get that kind of opportunity all that often during the season."

Samford, which committed 25 turnovers and shot just 32 percent from the field, had no double-figure scorers. Giovanni Price led the Bulldogs with nine points.

Southeast scored the game's first 10 points and was never seriously threatened the rest of the way, although the young and inexperienced Bulldogs were still hanging around at 27-19 with under five minutes remaining in the opening half.

But the Otahkians scored the final 12 points of the first half to lead 39-19 at the break, then they opened the second half with a 20-2 run to go up 59-21. After that it was just a matter of just how lopsided the final margin would be.

The Otahkians will now have a lengthy break as they don't return to action until Jan. 2 when Missouri Baptist visits the Show Me Center.