Murray State scrapes past Southeast Missouri State men's basketball, 78-72

The Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team's chances at a comeback win over rival Murray State slipped away when junior guard Jamaal Calvin slipped with 10.5 seconds left.

Calvin came up with a steal, sped toward the other end of the court and was whistled for a travel as he tried to stop himself to make a play with his team trailing by three.

The visiting Racers sealed their victory with free throws, holding off the Redhawks 78-72 at the Show Me Center.

"Thinking back, I should've went on ahead and went up with it because I had Trey [Kellum] trailing back behind, but what I was thinking in my head was I knew I had E [Eric McGill] behind me and he was open, it seemed like," Calvin said. "I tried to stop and I was going full speed ahead. I should've just went on ahead and went up and let Trey clean up or try to draw the foul."

Southeast Missouri State's Antonius Cleveland works to pull down a rebound past Murray State's Gee McGhee and Bryce Jones in the first half, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016 at the Show Me Center.Glenn Landberg

The Redhawks trailed by as many as 18 in the game; the Racers went up 54-36 on Jeffery Moss' third 3-pointer of the half with 16 minutes, 18 seconds remaining.

Moss finished with 26 points to pace Murray State and finished 7 of 11 from beyond the arc. Five of his triples came in the second half, but after he hit his final 3 to put MSU up 62-48 with 12:22 remaining he was held scoreless until he made the front end of a one-and-one after Calvin's travel to seal the win with 8.0 seconds left.

"When you're guarding somebody like that that can shoot the basketball -- I think he's made 13 3s in the past two games now -- you have to take away his space," Southeast coach Rick Ray said. "You have to make him bounce the basketball. I thought our guys on our closeouts, I'd much rather with somebody like that you get beat on a penetration on a closeout than let him have a 3, so just taking away his space."

Southeast (5-18 overall, 2-8 Ohio Valley Conference) pulled within 10 on an Antonius Cleveland jumper midway through the second half, and then Isiah Jones drained his only 3 of the night to bring the Redhawks within single digits for the first time since the start of the second half. That basket sparked a 10-3 Redhawks run to pull them within 65-62, capped with a Cleveland dunk with 5:52 remaining.

Cleveland finished with 22 points and seven rebounds.

The Racers (12-11, 6-4), who never trailed in the contest, pushed the lead to as much as seven, but a layup by McGill and a pair of Calvin free throws with 40.2 seconds left pulled them within three before Calvin's steal and turnover.

"It sucks. We felt like we played pretty hard," Calvin said. "We fought and tried to come back, but we dug ourselves into too big of a hole in the first half. It hurt."

Southeast Missouri State's Isiah Jones drives past Murray State's Gee McGhee in the first half, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016 at the Show Me Center.Glenn Landberg

MSU, which shot 63 percent in the first half and shot 57.7 percent from the floor on the night, scored the first seven points of the game and led 17-6 before McGill knocked down his first 3-pointer of the game with 12:20 to go in the half.

He drained another one three minutes later, Kellum converted a three-point play and McGill's third 3 cut it to 21-20.

"Having him get those key plays, knocking them down and keeping us in the game really helped and gave us a boost because we were sort of down and dragging," Calvin said. "But him making those shots, it kept us in the game and it allowed us to not get in too big of a hole. Â… If he hadn't done that we may not have been in striking distance like we were."

McGill finished with a career-high 20 points and was 6 of 6 from beyond the arc. He made five attempts in the first half after which Southeast trailed 40-32. MSU led by as many as 13 with 1:03 left before halftime.

"If he doesn't play the way he played in the first half then we going into halftime probably down 15 or 18 points, so I thought he did an outstanding job of scoring the basketball for us," Ray said. "Quite frankly, some of those were some really difficult, challenged shots -- probably at the end of the day bad shots, but it turned from a bad shot to a good shot because of the result."

Southeast shot 49.1 percent in the game and was 8 of 16 on 3-pointers.

The Redhawks turned the ball over 13 times, which the Racers scored 23 points off. Ray said part of his team's game plan was to keep it in a halfcourt setting, but turnovers didn't allow for that. He was also displeased with his team's ability to get the ball inside.

Forward Joel Angus III finished with seven points, all of which came at the charity stripe, and Kellum finished with 11 points -- on 5-of-9 shooting -- and five boards.

"The biggest thing that we didn't do is we didn't throw the ball inside," Ray said. "We thought we had a distinct size advantage and we wanted to take advantage of that opportunity by throwing the ball in to our forwards, but also trying to get [MSU forward Wayne] Langston in foul trouble by continually throwing the ball into Trey Kellum.

"We just did a poor job of that -- not just the guys post feeding the ball inside, but our post guys didn't work for position. I thought we did that in the second half and offensively it made a huge difference, but the start of the second half and the whole first half we just didn't follow our game plan."

The Redhawks travel to Charleston, Illinois, to face the Eastern Illinois Panthers (10-13, 6-4 OVC) in an 11 a.m. game.

"We've got to make sure we're setting our guys up to have the best recovery situation as possible," Ray said, "but then also we've got to make sure our guys understand that come 11 o'clock at Eastern Illinois we can't have any excuses that we played Thursday night or it was a quick turnaround."