Bowling Green downs winless Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team

Confidence isn't the easiest thing to find when a team's season is off to an 0-8 start, and that's where the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team finds itself after its latest loss to Bowling Green on Tuesday night.

Redhawks redshirt junior forward Trey Kellum wasn't going to let himself or his teammates use that as an excuse for their continued struggles following their 79-52 loss at the Show Me Center, though.

"You've just got to have self-confidence in whatever you can do out there," Kellum said. "If you know you can make a shot you've got to be able to shoot that shot without having somebody else tell you that's a bad shot, knowing you can make that type of shot. You've just got to play how you've always been playing and try to put it into the new system we've got and try to put everybody on one page."

Southeast didn't have any of that conviction in anything it tried against the Falcons.

The Redhawks, who are off to their worst start since starting the 2010-11 season 0-10, never led in the contest and found themselves in an eight-point hole after the first 4 minutes, 40 seconds of the game.

BGSU led 12-4 with 14:28 to go in the first half before Southeast went on a 7-1 spurt to pull within two points with 12:03 left before the break. The Redhawks never got any closer and trailed 35-22 at halftime.

They implemented a 1-3-1 zone defense in the first 20 minutes of the game and the Falcons were able to work the ball inside-out with ease. They shot 46.7 percent in the first half, knocking down 3 of 8 3-point attempts. They had seven second-chance points off eight offensive boards, which was a point of emphasis at halftime.

Southeast came out in the second half in a man-to-man, which Ray said his players said they wanted to try and he trusted, although he had some reservations.

The Falcons turned it over on their first possession, but then a jumper by David Joseph and a trey by Zack Denny pushed their lead to 16.

Denny's 3 was one of seven that BGSU made in the second half. The Falcons were 7 of 10 from beyond the arc, but they were 7 of 8 until a late-game sub missed a pair in the final minute of the game.

Southeast Missouri State coach Rick Ray watches the second half against Bowling Green Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2015 at the Show Me Center. (Glenn Landberg)

"Well, my fear factor with the Bowling Green team was the fact that they were a superior passing team," Ray said. "They do a great job of sharing the basketball. We wanted to try to go man in that second half and they really cut us up. I thought we did a decent job in our zone defense the first half but we went to man and they just chopped us up. But we've got to figure out a way to, like, understand who we are. We put so much pressure on our defense to just get stops all the time because we're just having a hard time scoring the basketball and shooting the ball.

"I told our guys it's like we've got to be the Alabama defense on football because we just don't score the basketball on the offensive end. But like [Alabama] understands where their bread is buttered so they give the ball to [running back] Derrick Henry 46 times and 44 times because they know the defense is that good. We've got to understand that fact and I just don't think we understand that yet."

The 52 points that Southeast scored was the fewest allowed by BGSU -- which improved to 7-2 and extended its winning streak to six games -- this season.

The Redhawks have scored 56 points or fewer in half of their games this season.

"If we're going to score 50 points on a nightly basis we need to hold the other team to around [that] and just make them grind out games and try to pull it out like that," said senior guard Isiah Jones, who led the team with 12 points on 5-of-13 shooting.

Southeast Missouri State's Marcus Wallace takes a shot in the first half against Bowling Green Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2015 at the Show Me Center. (Glenn Landberg)

Southeast had several opportunities to score in the paint, but shot just 31.9 percent in the game.

Half of their 38 rebounds were offensive boards and they finished with 17 second-chance points. The Redhawks were outscored 44-32 in the paint, and BGSU added 10 3-pointers to their total.

"We've just got to finish," Kellum said. "We've just got to finish a point-blank layup. You can't miss layups and expect to win games. We can't keep shooting ourselves in the foot and expect the refs to bail us out either. We've got to go through the contact and finish instead of looking for the fouls."

Even when they do get fouled it doesn't help the Redhawks much. They were 5 of 10 from the free-throw line, where they're shooting 53.5 percent on the season.

Southeast shot 17.6 percent from 3, knocking down 3 of 17 attempts. Jones, who's now 9 of 39 from 3-point range on the season, hit a pair and freshman Jaylin Stewart made one.

"I just think we have the inability to shoot the basketball, and if you was to ask me who's the one guy on our team that I feel confident can make shots it'd be Isiah Jones at this point in time, and he's struggling to shoot the basketball," Ray said. "Part of that is the fact that he feels like every time he's open that he's got to make it because other guys aren't making it. There's a lot of pressure when you're at the free-throw line, when you're at the 3-point line because we all know that we're not shooting the basketball well. Now, I do think we can shoot better than this, but the fact remains right now if you look at the history of our team now, we've played eight games, we're just not a good shooting team."

Southeast remains at home for a Saturday game against Ole Miss. The Rebels of the Southeastern Conference are 6-2 and bring a three-game winning streak to the Show Me Center.

"We've got to figure out a way to compete, and the way for us to compete is to be really good on the defensive end and be sound on the offensive end," Ray said of his message to the team after the game. "I thought we did a pretty decent job of that against Memphis, kind of knowing who we are, but I think when we get outside of ourself -- and there's nothing wrong with admitting the fact that we're not a good shooting team. There's nothing wrong with admitting the fact that we don't do a great job finishing at the rim. But the problem is if you don't accept those facts and you keep trying to do things that we're not accustomed to doing or we're not successful doing, then it leads to bad things. I just think we've just kind of got to understand where we are right now.

"And, 'hey, keep fighting. It'll get better. Keep shooting.' But at this point in time this is the fact of who we are and we've got to make sure we accept that if we're going to be successful."