SE Suffers Setback vs. Bisons

DURANT, Okla. – Briley Moon hit four threes and finished with 22 points but it was not enough to lift Southeastern past Harding in a 66-59 loss on Thursday night in Bloomer Sullivan Arena.
 
The loss drops the Savage Storm to 7-10 overall and 5-6 in Great American Conference play heading into a Saturday afternoon matchup with Arkansas Tech at 1 p.m. back in Bloomer Sullivan Arena.
 
"One of the best players in our conference is number 24," said head coach Darin Grover. "She's 6-3 and we don't really have a matchup for her so. We did beat them at their place playing man, but I thought we would change it up and try to protect the paint as much as we possibly could. I think the numbers will bare it out that strategy controlled them. She scored 13 points and I believe eight of them were off offensive rebounds. "
 
"You can't win games if you continually miss shots," he continued. "It doesn't get better. If you make shots you have a chance to win games. We gave ourselves a chance today by defending them well enough. We had open threes. You think about this, we got 29 threes off. I'm not saying we necessarily wanted to do that, but we got 29 threes off. I don't think that we take bad shots, so that means that we took 29 or maybe 27 open shots. You've got to hit a better percentage of them than that."
 
Moon connected on four threes and finished the game shooting 56.3 percent from the field to collect her game-high 22 points. Moon was also the team's top rebounder with eight.
 
Chandler Kemp was the only other Storm player in double-figures, finishing with 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting.
 
Kamryn Cantwell finished just shy of double digits with nine points and handed out a game-high six assists and snagged three steals.
 
Jordan Benson was next in line with eight points, while Kentoya Woods turned in six points and pulled down six boards.
 
Harding jumped out to an early 6-0 lead, but SE would score on three-straight possessions to knot the game at 6-6.
 
The teams would trade buckets over the remainder of the first quarter, with HU taking a 15-12 lead after the first quarter.
 
The Bisons would stretch the lead to five points early, but a 6-0 run capped by a Kemp layup would give SE its first lead of the night at 18-17 with 4:31 to play in the first half.
 
Harding would regain the lead on its next possession and go up by as many as four over the final minutes of the second quarter before a pair of Kemp free throws with less than a minute to play would close the gap to 26-25 at halftime.
 
The third quarter saw HU stretch its lead slowly, going up by as many as nine points before a Moon three with 27 seconds left closed the gap to 45-39 after three quarters.
 
The Bisons lead would hit a game-high of 11 points with 3:22 to play, but a 7-0 run capped by a Benson three would cut the deficit to four points with 1:50 to play.
 
Unfortunately, that was as close as they would get as HU would hold off a Storm rally for a 66-59 final score.