Rally falls short for Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team vs. EIU

For the second game in a row the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team climbed its way back into the contest late before falling short.

The Redhawks were defeated 71-68 by Eastern Illinois on Saturday night at the Show Me Center in their home finale on the heels of their 72-69 loss to SIU Edwardsville on Thursda

It was the seventh straight loss for Southeast, which dropped to 5-23 and 2-13 in the Ohio Valley Conference.

"Here's the thing that we've got to understand is, we're bad right now, but the encouraging thing is that we've got a chance," Southeast coach Rick Ray said. "I mean, if we can just add a couple pieces here, the improvement of our guys in the offseason. We're losing to teams by two points, three points, and if we just get better the margin of error can really close and we can be a good team. We've got to understand that improvement is the key.

"Like individual improvement for us in the offseason, recruiting and doing a good job in that area and coaches having a better understanding of what I'm trying to do and what we want to do, and now I've got a better feel for what our personnel is so to me it's all about improvement in this offseason."

Southeast Missouri State's Antonius Cleveland drives against Eastern Illinois' Patrick Muldoon during the first half.

Southeast was down 30-29 at halftime and trailed by as much as 16 after a 3-pointer by EIU freshman Casey Teson pushed the Panthers' lead to 64-48 with 7 minutes, 16 seconds to play.

The Redhawks then went on a 13-2 run to trim it to five with 1:34 left.

Cornell Johnston pushed the lead back to eight with a triple, but Southeast's lone senior Isiah Jones, who was honored prior to the game, answered with a 3 with 33 seconds left.

After a Southeast timeout EIU's Demetrius McReynolds was fouled, but he missed the front-end of a one-and-one with 27.7 on the clock and a layup by junior forward Joel Angus III cut it to 69-66 with 20 seconds remaining.

McReynolds was fouled out of another Redhawks' timeout and missed both free throws.

Southeast Missouri State's Trey Kellum tries to shoot against Eastern Illinois A.J. Riley during the first half Saturday, Feb. 20, 2016 at the Show Me Center.Fred Lynch

Jones missed a 3-point attempt with 11 seconds left and McReynolds, who led all scorers with 19 points, went back to the line and sealed the victory with two FTs with seven on the clock.

Junior guard Antonius Cleveland, who finished with a team-high 14 points -- 10 of which came in the first 20 minutes -- got a basket in the closing seconds for the final score.

"I've got to do a better job of communicating to our guys because that second-to-last possession in the game we should've attacked the rim," Ray said. "And I didn't have any timeouts to gather everybody, but I've got to make sure that I talk to someone and they echo it to everybody because in a situation like that you've got plenty of opportunities to attack the paint. The other team doesn't want to foul, they're not going to help off the 3-point line because they're not going to give up a 3, so I've got to do a better job of making sure the team knows what we need to get out of that situation."

Southeast held EIU to 38.2 percent shooting in the first half. The Panthers shot 55.6 percent from the field in the second half and made 5 of 9 3s.

After the Redhawks regained a one-point lead with a Cleveland dunk out of halftime, the Panthers quickly took it for good with a McReynolds triple.

"We just need to finish, take care of the little things and just always fight," junior guard Jamaal Calvin said. "I think we did a good job of that, but we need to be solid the whole game. I think sometimes we get tired at times and I think that's when they do go on their runs. We just need to focus on them little things and being solid the whole 40 minutes and I think we'll be good."

Southeast, which shot 38.5 percent on the night, pulled within 37-36 with 16:26 remaining on Jones' first 3 of the night -- he finished 3 of 8 -- before the Panthers went on a 13-2 run.

Teson scored eight of his 14 points, including a pair of 3s, during that stretch.

"I thought the first thing was we just absolutely killed ourself on the offensive end," Ray said. "That's why they had opportunities on offense because we turned the ball over or we took a bad shot, so we were defending probably 30 seconds or 25 seconds, but we were making them defend for 5-10 seconds. Between us turning the basketball over and between us taking bad shots we hurt ourself on the defensive end with our inappropriate opportunities on the offensive end."

The Redhawks close out the season at Austin Peay on Saturday.

"The way we see it is it's only going to get better," Angus said. "We've just got to get better. We've got another game that we've got to focus on. We're going to play, give it our best effort to win, and after that it's an old season and it's just a new process."