Fire women's basketball marches into the second to last week of regular season basketball after splitting last week's matchups.
Cold shooting and turnovers led to a 82-74 loss for Southeastern at Keiser to split the season series. The defense struggled to get a stop as well as the Fire allowed their highest points against for the season, despite only allowing four three pointers the Fire were also outrebounded on both sides of the court. Offensively,
Kiki Britzmann and
Mya Herman were the leaders. Britzmann had a career-high 20 points on 6-10 shooting, also going 8-9 from the free throw. Herman added 14 points of her own.
Saturday afternoon Southeastern traveled across Polk County to meet the Webber International Warriors. The Fire and Warriors traded scores early on, but the stingy defense of Southeastern prevailed, overcoming more three point struggles to post a 70-59 road victory, completing the season sweep of Webber and advancing to 17-6 on the season.
Bekki Kalaydjiev led in scoring with 18 on 73%, 8-11, shooting, and
Kiki Britzmann put forth an outstanding effort as well, turning in a double-double with 16 points and ten rebounds.
On Wednesday the Fire welcome their co-leader in The Sun Conference in St. Thomas to The Furnace. In their contest earlier this season the Fire overcame a nine point first quarter, outplaying St. Thomas in the last three quarters to claim a huge 71-60 road win. Kalaydjiev led the Fire with a 15-point effort.
For Southeastern, Kalaydjiev leads all scorers with 14.4 points per game and Britzmann coming off a few strong performances is averaging 10.9 points per game, Herman is the third highest scorer with 9.3 points per contest. As a team the Fire spread the ball well assisting nearly 16 times per game, Kalaydjiev leads that category as well with 3.9 assists per game.
Defensively, the Fire are a dominating force defensively only allowing 57.4 points per game which is 21st in the NAIA, forcing 18 turnovers and scoring 19.3 points off of those turnovers.
Rebecca Cook and Britzmann clean up the glass, Cook averages eight rebounds per game and Britzmann 5.3.
St. Thomas (18-5, 8-2 SUN) also boasts a strong defense, holding opponents to 59.8 points per game while offensively the Bobcats put up 71. The Bobcats come into this contest off of a 83-55 victory over Warner.
The surge of offense is led by senior guard Brooke Bogatz who puts up 15 per contest, she is assisted by Paige McDonald who averaged 10.7 per game. Their defense posts 20 forced turnovers per game with half of those forced turnovers being steals. Four of the Bobcats average nearly two steals per game.
On Saturday the Fire journey up to the home of the Mariners, the College of Coastal Georgia. In the first meeting between the two teams this season the Fire dominated the first half, going up 58-28 into halftime and coasted the second half coming away with a 86-69 victory. In that game, the Fire had five scorers in double digits,
Kacilyn Krebs had 18 points on an outstanding 6-7 shooting from behind the arc, this was also a season high for Krebs.
Coastal Georgia comes into this matchup off of a home loss to Florida Memorial 61-60, falling to eighth in the Sun Conference. In the first game against SEU, the Mariners shot 47 percent from three and Morgon Webb led all scorers with 23 going 5-9 from behind the arc.
This season Coastal Georgia is led by Sonia Forney who is averaging 12.1 points, the Mariners are averaging 62 points per game and allowing 65. Andranique Voorhies leads all rebounders with 8.5 rebounds per game.
The game on Wednesday tips off from the Furnace at 5:30 p.m., the game versus Coastal Georgia begins at 2 p.m.
You can purchase tickets
HERE
