Five Redhawks will be right at home when Southeast men visit Memphis

It's by no accident that five of the 13 members of the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team list Memphis as their hometown.

Tyler Stone, Jarekious Bradley, Nino Johnson, Antonius Cleveland and Darrian Gray are all from Memphis, and will be playing in front of friends and family when the Redhawks (7-3) visit nationally ranked Memphis (7-2) for a 7 p.m. game Saturday.

Bradley is the team's leading scorer -- second in the OVC at 19.5 ppg -- while Stone, Gray and Cleveland all average in double figures. Stone, Bradley and Johnson are the team's top three rebounders.

"Memphis is an unbelievable recruiting grounds for us and always has been for me," Southeast coach Dickey Nutt said. "In my career we've always had good Memphis young men, student-athletes, playing for us."

Nutt said if he could, he'd have all his players come from Cape Girardeau. He knows that's really not realistic, so Memphis becomes the next best thing.

Senior Tyler Stone, second on the team in scoring and the leading rebounder, is the OVC preseason Player of the Year.

"Memphis is a very, very good basketball city," Nutt said. "It's probably one of the best basketball cities in the South. You've got Atlanta, Dallas, whatever, but they're mainly football if you think about it. Memphis is known for their basketball, and they have an unbelievable amount of talent."

The proximity to Cape Girardeau doesn't hurt, either. It takes about two and a half hours to drive from Cape Girardeau to Memphis.

Assistant coach Jamie Rosser, who played for Nutt at Arkansas State, is in charge of recruiting players from Memphis. He's from Memphis, which helps him throughout the recruiting process.

"Me being from Memphis and just the relationship with the kids and the parents and the community, it's easy to go back in there," Rosser said. "Because like I said, it's home. Those guys are going to be respecting me because I'm from there."

Each of the five Southeast players from Memphis mentioned a close relationship with Rosser as being a reason why they chose to be a Redhawk, but each player has a different route that they took to get the point that they are today.

Junior Jarekious Bradley, second in the OVC in scoring, has been named OVC newcomer of the week five times this season.

Stone, a senior guard, played basketball for the University of Missouri his freshman season before transferring to Southeast, but it wasn't because Nutt and his staff hadn't shown any interest.

"We recruited him, and at the last hour, I mean maybe the last minute Missouri saw him and offered him a scholarship and they stole him from us," Nutt said. "Well, he goes there and he wasn't happy, it didn't work out, and all of a sudden he came back."

Stone said that the Southeast coaching staff let him know when he chose Missouri that if he wasn't happy he was always welcome at Southeast.

Patient approach

"I think my staff has done a good job of when we are turned down -- I'm quick to tell a guy to go jump in the river if he turns us down, but my staff has to help me with maybe just taking the high road and saying, 'Hey, good luck to you,'" Nutt said. "And guess what? Then when it doesn't work out, then here they come calling.

Junior Darrian Gray is averaging 11.3 points per game.

"Sometimes I still tell them to go jump in the river, but in Tyler's case this was a project I wanted to tackle because I thought with his athleticism and his size and his talent ... we were just trying to build our program and we were just trying to get it off the ground four years ago and just trying to get anybody to be interested in Southeast Missouri, and we feel like we've done that."

For Bradley, Stone's cousin, it was a different path. Bradley, a junior guard/forward, was recruited by Southeast in high school, but he attended junior college for two years. He verbally committed to Western Kentucky last summer, but due to academic reasons was unable to attend school and play basketball there.

Bradley said that throughout his junior college career and even after he had committed to Western Kentucky, the Southeast coaching staff continued to keep in touch with him.

When Bradley was unable to attend Western Kentucky, he called the coaching staff at Southeast and they had a scholarship available for him.

"I guess it was just meant for me to come here because they never gave up," Bradley said.

Freshman Antonius Cleveland has been selected OVC freshman of the week once this season.

Stone doesn't think he had too much to do with his cousin's decision, but admitted to trying to get him to become a Redhawk.

"Of course I tried to persuade him," Stone said with a laugh. "He's one of the top juco players in the country. I'm going to persuade him, of course. It's family. There's nothing like playing with family. It's something we talked about before he even got here, having a chance to play with your cousin and do big things on the court."

Gray, a junior guard, was another transfer that had a close connection with the Southeast coaching staff during his junior college career and felt that he could trust Rosser and Nutt.

"I talked to Coach Rosser probably every other day, keeping up with my stats, how I'm doing, if I'm healthy," Gray said. "Coach Nutt also, I talked to him since my senior year. ... He kept me on the radar."

Johnson, a junior forward, came to Southeast straight out of high school, and Cleveland spent a year at Faith Baptist Christian Academy, a prep school in Georgia.

Southeast Missouri State's Nino Johnson shoots against Illinois-Chicago's Jake Wiegand during the first half Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013 at the Show Me Center. (Fred Lynch)

Johnson received scholarship offers from other schools, including Auburn, Cincinnati and Mississippi, but he wanted to remain close to home and liked the idea of helping rebuild a program.

Cleveland, a freshman guard, said Rosser played a big role in his signing because he knew him from high school. Rosser coached girls basketball at Overton in 2008 and 2009, and Cleveland played there in 2009 and 2010.

It's safe to say that Rosser and the Memphis recruits are excited to get on the road and take on Memphis, as well as junior guard Josh Langford, an Auburn transfer who will be eligible for Southeast after sitting out a year due to NCAA transfer rules.

"My whole family's going to be there, so it's going to be kind of crazy playing on this level in front of my family," said Cleveland, whose mom has traveled from Memphis to attend every Southeast home game. "Most important I think it's going to be fun. It'll be fun to go back home and play against the home team and try to get a 'W'."

For the five players from Memphis, it could be interesting to play against some former high school opponents and teammates.

Johnson mentioned playing against Memphis guards Chris Crawford and Trey Draper in high school, and he was teammates with guard Joe Jackson at White Station High School. Jackson leads the Tigers in scoring with 15.2 points per game.

Southeast's players from Memphis also knew each other before they came to Southeast and, besides Cleveland who is younger than the others, played with and against each other in Memphis during high school and on AAU teams. Cleveland attended middle school with Gray.

"We had an immediate connection and we just click well together on the court," Johnson said. "We're just like family. It's just like we're in Memphis. Nothing has changed at all."

"The guys who are here now, they were some of the most competitive guys at their school coming out," Stone said. "So for all of us to come out from different teams and be on one team and having no egos and just having the same dream -- it's an amazing feeling when everybody just wants to win."