The stage is set for Fire women's basketball in The Sun Conference Women's Basketball tournament. Friday, Southeastern prepares to defend the Furnace in its semifinal match against the #4 seed St. Thomas Bobcats, who defeated the #5 Webber Warriors Tuesday night in the quarterfinal contest 78-55.
This will be the third contest between the Fire and Bobcats this season, and the series is currently split with one win for each team. Back in January the Fire journeyed down to the St. Thomas and despite a slow start, they turned the game around and took home a 71-60 road win. The second contest started the same way with the Fire falling behind early, even though they trailed by as much as 14, Southeastern fought back and took the lead. However, the late game offense of the Bobcats granted them a road victory in The Furnace over the Fire 79-74.
In the first game, the scoring was spread evenly between the Fire offense.
Bekki Kalaydjiev led the way with 15 and
Kiki Britzmann and
Mya Herman each had 13. The final double-digit scorer,
Courtni Demorest, ended with 10. The main difference in this game was the free throw line, where the Fire completed 16-20 free throws whereas the Bobcats only shot four times from the charity stripe.
The second time around, St. Thomas guard Brooke Bogatz struck seven times from the field contributing 20 points as well as 13 rebounds. She only had three points the first time the two teams met. Guard Marta Franco had 23 points in The Furnace, whereas at home she led the Bobcats in scoring with 15. In their road win, St. Thomas only saw points from five individuals in the form of 43.9 percent shooting and 14 three pointers.
In the home loss, Kalaydjiev added 24 to her career points totals, and Britzmann and Herman again scored the same amount, this time it was 11 points. Offensively, shooting was not the problem for the Fire, it was the turnovers and rebounding that came back to bite. The Bobcats outrebounded the Fire by five and recorded eight steals, and forced 19 turnovers.
The keys for the Fire this time through is to take care of the ball and limit turnovers, as well limiting Bobcats to one possession per trip, grabbing the rebound of the first miss.
The Bobcats score 71.4 points per game, the Fire add 71.6. Southeastern only allows 58.1 points per game and St. Thomas holds opponents to 61 points per game. The Fire force 18 turnovers per game and score 19 points off of those turnovers, whereas the Bobcats force 19 turnovers and score 19 points off of turnovers.
The contest will tip off at 5 p.m. on Friday night to see who claim a spot in the Sun Conference title bout, the winner of this contest will await the victor of Ave Maria vs. Keiser which play at 7 p.m. The championship game on Saturday starts at 7 p.m.
You can buy your tickets
HERE
