COLUMN: It's time for Redhawks to become a winner

It's time for the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team to realize its potential.

It's time for the Redhawks to accept their ability to be great -- to own it, appreciate it, even show it off for the world to see.

Above all, it's time to take advantage of it.

"All you can ask on the road is have a chance at the end, and we had our chances," Southeast coach Dickey Nutt said following the Redhawks' 78-77 loss to Belmont on Thursday. "We just didn't execute in that last 10 seconds, and that was disappointing because we had our chance."

It's time for having a chance to win to stop being enough.

It's time to win.

Better yet, it's time to expect to win because these players are good enough to win.

The Redhawks have talked about winning and competing for championships for years now. I'm still not sure they believe they can or know if they ever will.

Winning and believing you can win are like the chicken and the egg -- it's hard to know which one comes first.

"What I told them after the game is I think our non-conference, brutal schedule prepared us for a game like this," Nutt said. "We're getting closer, but at the end of the day it's still a loss."

Outside of an exciting, buzzer-beating win against now 7-7 Southern Illinois, the Redhawks mostly feasted on bad teams -- 0-11 Central Arkansas, 1-9 Alabama A&M and 3-10 Southeastern Lousiana to name a few -- for wins during the non-conference portion of their schedule.

They played Missouri close on the road in a game they had a chance to win and suffered an eight-point loss to 7-3 Bowling Green. Five other losses have been by double-digits to the likes of 4-10 Loyola Marymount and 7-7 San Diego without star guard Jarekious Bradley and Missouri State (7-6), Ole Miss (8-4) and Arkansas (9-2) with him.

Nutt has said repeatedly that playing that schedule would pay dividends come conference play.

"Playing in tough arenas, getting down, showing some toughness -- all of those things," Nutt said of how the schedule prepared them. "I think we're tougher. We're tougher as a program, we're tougher as a team. Our record doesn't show it right now, but there are a lot of conference games to play. We've got some veteran guys. I've got three seniors, but I also have a lot of young guys -- guys like Marcus Wallace, TJ Thomas, playing in places like these," Nutt said.

Thursday's environment was hardly hostile, though. There were just 1,597 people in the Curb Event Center and they weren't particularly raucous at any point.

Nutt also likes to point out that winning on the road is extremely difficult. Maybe it is, but the great teams do it.

That brings us back to this team's greatness. Or at least it's potential to be great.

Saturday's game showed once again that Southeast can play with the league's elite. The Redhawks have done it multiple times in the last few seasons, though they've been routed against great opponents as well.

Southeast took their final lead against Belmont with 17 minutes, 17 seconds left in the first half but never trailed by more than 10.

With 12:17 to go it looked like the momentum had swung to the Redhawks when forward Nino Johnson dunked and was fouled, leading him to release a primal scream.

Johnson made the free throw, and the Redhawks forced the Bruins deep into the shot clock on defense before drawing a miss.

Johnson then scored in transition, pulling the Redhawks within two.

Then Belmont hit a 3-pointer on each its next four possessions to once again give itself a little cushion until Southeast made another push in the closing minute.

Ultimately, the Redhawks never got a shot at the win.

But they could have.

After the game Nutt said his defense, which entered the game focused on slowing down the Bruins from behind the arc, played well. He said the offense was fine, too.

"We did some good things," he said. "We've just got to put them away. I thought we did a good job defensively in the last seven or eight minutes. We finally got some stops that we needed. I thought our press was good, I thought it bothered them a little bit and I thought they wore down a little bit at the end. They shoot the ball extremely well here, and we give them credit for that, but our guys are getting better. We're getting better."

Getting better is laudable. No great team is at their best on Jan. 1, but it's possible to win in the meantime, beginning with a conference matchup against 3-12 Tennessee State on Saturday.

So go ahead and win, Redhawks. Win a lot. Win all the games you have left on your schedule. Win the OVC tournament. Go to the NCAA tournament. Go ahead and beat someone there.

You can.

It's time.

Rachel Crader is editor of the Southeast Missourian and semoball.com.