Defense lifts Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team past TTU

Southeast Missouri State senior guard Jarekious Bradley didn't have to shoot a game-winning shot to give the Redhawks' men's basketball team a win Saturday night.

Instead he had to come up with a defensive play in the final seconds to hold off the visiting Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles.

TTU got the ball back on the sideline with six seconds left after a Southeast miscue with a chance to tie or win the game, but Bradley blocked Jordan Johnson's jumper, snagged the ball and hit a pair of free throws to seal a 65-61 Redhawks' victory.

"I didn't think they was going to shoot a 3. I thought he was going to drive it," Bradley said. "That's why I was so far off. He did that crossover going into the jump shot, and I was close enough there to contest it and blocked it."

Bradley scored the last 11 Southeast points of the game, including four consecutive free throws that put the Redhawks ahead for good at 61-60 with 2 minutes, 55 seconds remaining.

Southeast took a three-point lead on his layup 20 seconds later before TTU's Dwan Caldwell split a pair of free throws that cut the lead to two with a minute and a half left.

The Redhawks came up with blocks on back-to-back defensive stops, including one with 12 seconds left that allowed sophomore guard Antonius Cleveland to push the ball in transition. Cleveland turned the ball over, but the Redhawks deflected the ball out of bounds when TTU tried to push the ball up the court to set up Bradley's final block.

"I don't ever want to talk about a team being -- and I hate the word -- snake-bit," Southeast coach Dickey Nutt said. "Sometimes when things don't go your way that's the first thing you think about. *... 'Everything happens to us,' is kind of a negative. Here I am, again, 9 seconds to go, two on one, Antonius Cleveland comes down -- what does he do? Dribbles it off his foot. But I encouraged our guys right there, 'Hey, we don't believe in that. We're going to make another stop.' And we did. We got stop after stop after stop after stop, and that was the difference in the game. On a night when we didn't shoot the ball particularly well, and certainly not from the free-throw line, we found a way to win."

Southeast Missouri State's Nino Johnson drives to the basket against Tennessee Tech's Charles Jackson, left, and Dwan Caldwell during the second half Saturday, Jan. 17, 2014 at the Show Me Center. (FRED LYNCH)

Nutt told his players in the final few minutes to contest shots, and not worry about fouling. He didn't want them to play "soft."

"That's something where in the past we may have just kind of stayed out of the way and kind of let us hope to win," Nutt said. "We took our win tonight, and that was big. *... A couple of games earlier in the year we got soft with three minutes to go. We got tough tonight for three minutes and that was a good sign."

The Redhawks never trailed throughout the first half of the contest, but never led by more than six points, and held just a 32-30 advantage at the break.

TTU quickly tied it up with the first basket of the second half, but Southeast followed that with a 9-2 run that featured 3s from junior guard Isiah Jones and senior guard Josh Langford that pushed the lead to 41-34 with 16:31 left.

Three minutes later the Golden Eagles knotted it back up and then took their first lead of the night with a pair of free throws by Javon McKay that made it 47-46.

Neither team led by more than three points until the final buzzer, and it was tied five more times.

Bradley led the Redhawks with 18 points and seven rebounds. Senior forward Nino Johnson had 14 points, five rebounds, three blocks and two steals, but was just 4 of 10 from the free-throw line.

Southeast shot 53.6 percent from the charity stripe, making just 15 of 28 attempts. Bradley, who'd made 30 consecutive free throws entering the game, missed his first one before knocking down his six attempts in the final three minutes.

Southeast Missouri State's J.J. Thompson takes a shot as Tennessee Tech's Torrance Rowe defends during the first half Saturday, Jan. 17, 2014 at the Show Me Center. (FRED LYNCH)

The Redhawks shot 39.6 percent from the floor (21 of 53) and were 8 of 24 from 3-point range.

TTU, which was led by center Charles Jackson and Johnson with 14 points apiece and Caldwell with 11 points, shot 40.4 percent in the game. They made 6 of 20 3-point attempt and were 9 of 13 from the free-throw line.

"I told our guys after, in the dressing room, that even though we had a horrific night at the free-throw line, we had a below average night in the field goal column, but still you found a way to win, and we found a good 'W' tonight because I felt like defensively we stepped up," Nutt said.

The Redhawks improved to 9-10 and 3-3 in the OVC with their first conference home win. They face UT Martin on the road Saturday.

"Like coach was talking about, we get down sometimes and we kind of get out of hand," Johnson said. "Like he said against Jacksonville State when we went up 8-0 in the first couple minutes, and everything was good and we was high-fiving each other. When we get down he was saying, 'What can we do then?' We don't high-five each other, we're mad, something's not right. No matter what in this game we stayed together. We got down the last three or four minutes -- we stayed together. We missed free throws -- we stayed together. Coach stayed on us. He stuck with us. He stayed faithful. He had faith in us, and we pulled it out."