Injury, crucial loss damage Southeast men's basketball team's chances for OVC tourney berth

When Southeast Missouri State's leading scorer Jarekious Bradley left the game with a left knee injury with 14 minutes, 46 seconds remaining in the first half, his teammates and coach Dickey Nutt thought it was an opportunity for someone else to take on a bigger role.

That role was never filled, and the Redhawks dropped a crucial -- and winnable -- game to Ohio Valley Conference West Division opponent UT Martin.

The Redhawks lost 79-70 to the Skyhawks and saw their chances of making the OVC tournament slip further away.

"You're going to win some, you're going to lose some, but tonight, just the way we lost was horrible," Southeast senior Tyler Stone said. "We got out-toughed. They put a zone on us. We couldn't get nothing to go out of the zone. Our intensity -- we had a lack of intensity. And on top of that, our best player went down."

"It hurts our team tremendously," Stone said of Bradley's injury, "but we need guys to step up."

When Bradley left the game, Southeast held a 10-6 lead. The Redhawks extended the lead to as many as nine with 11:09 remaining in the half, but UTM used a 18-5 run over the next five minutes to take a 26-22 lead. The teams traded baskets for the remainder of a sloppy first half, and the Skyhawks held a 33-30 lead at halftime.

Southeast struggled to get its offense going, and it was evident in its 0-of-9 shooting from behind the arc in the first half.

Neither team garnered much of a lead in the second half, and Southeast cut what had been a seven-point UTM lead to 70-68 with 2:02 remaining.

Turnovers on consecutive possessions by Lucas Nutt in the final minute and a half led to Southeast fouls, and the Skyhawks hit free throws to secure the win.

"I think it's more of just playing with confidence, somebody stepping up and making that stop, making that play," Nutt said of his team faltering down the stretch. "I mean, we're having guys making breakdowns when it's a tie ballgame and the guy takes you off the dribble and instead of keeping the right fundamentals, you bump into him and you put him on the line. Or we have a breakdown in rotation and all of a sudden now they make a run. And then go down on this end, and we turn it over with a bad dribble, a dribble off his foot. That's the thing that's disappointing. And it goes back to you have to put the ball in their hands and it goes back to senior leadership. Lucas and Tyler, that's the ones we're counting on, and they didn't have great nights. We did not play very well. Obviously didn't play very well at all."

Stone led Southeast with 21 points on 9-of-11 shooting and grabbed 16 rebounds.

"I thought Tyler Stone played really hard, but I just don't think anybody matched his level," Nutt said. "For whatever reason we played tight. We played as if we had pressure on us, we played with a lack of confidence. All those things are something that -- I mean, you've got to be a player. You're a Division I player. You can't allow a little thing -- you can't allow big things like an injury to one of our players ... and then we just played with a lack of urgency. They put a 3-2 zone on us and we couldn't crack it. We couldn't hit a shot."

The Redhawks shot 43.5 percent from the field and were 5 of 22 from behind the arc. They shot 57.9 percent (11 of 19) on free throws, and the Skyhawks shot 79.2 percent from the line (19 of 24).

"We just didn't play. We didn't play our brand of basketball, and that's disappointing," Nutt said. "I take full responsibility for that, I promise you that. I promise that we're going to get back to practice, and we're going to look at some other guys. I thought Will Holifield played some good minutes tonight. We're going to look at CJ Reese, we're going to look at Caleb Woods and those guys.

"Just give me an honest effort every possession. Every possession. I know you can't hit every shot. I understand that. But you can give me an honest effort every possession and we can play smart basketball. We didn't do that."

The win was UT Martin's third conference win of the season. The Skyhawks (8-19, 3-9 OVC) sit in last place in the OVC West division standings and 11th overall.

The chances of the preseason OVC West Division favorite Redhawks qualifying for the conference tournament are getting slimmer. With four games left Southeast (13-13, 4-8 OVC) remains in fifth place in the West Division and 10th overall.

The Redhawks could be dealt a major blow if they're without Bradley in the final four games. Nutt said that the doctor was optimistic and did not think that Bradley had a torn ACL and said they'd know more within the next few days.

Southeast's next game is against Jacksonville State on Feb. 20 in Cape Girardeau. The Gamecocks (10-16, 4-7 OVC) sit just one place ahead of Southeast in the conference standings.

"We can't worry about anything down the road. We can't worry about what everybody else is doing," Nutt said. "One game at a time. We've got four to play and if we can win these four I think that we'll have a chance to be in the tournament. Anything less than that, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see, but obviously have got to go back to work."