Ray focused on building bond with current Redhawks

After he was introduced as the new Southeast Missouri State men's basketball coach, Rick Ray stood behind a podium in the concourse of the Show Me Center and thanked his wife Breyana, university president Dr. Kenneth Dobbins and athletic director Mark Alnutt.

He rattled off the reasons he decided Southeast was the right place for him and his family, and why he thinks the Redhawks are capable of winning.

Then he brought up one last person that he wanted to thank -- someone that he could relate to because he was fired from Mississippi State on March 21 -- in the man he replaced, Dickey Nutt.

"I want to thank Coach Nutt and his coaching staff. I just got done meeting with those young men in the locker room, and you can tell that they recruited quality student-athletes," Ray said. "Those guys looked me in the eyes, they paid attention, they were hanging on to every word that I was saying. I told them, 'No one signed up for what you guys are going through,' and if anybody has empathy for what that team is going through I do because I just went through it at Mississippi State."

One of Ray's first objectives on the job is to form relationships with those players that didn't choose him, the nine players that remain from Nutt's final team.

Ray spent the 20 minutes prior to the press conference where he was announced as the 20th coach in program history talking to the returning Redhawks players in their locker room, and he wanted them to know that he understands the situation that they're going through and the shock and confusion that comes along with it.

"I want those guys to know that we want them to be a part of this program," Ray said. "The way you get young men to come to your university is through relationships, so they built relationships with the previous coaching staff and now those relationships have been severed, and it's now my time to make sure that we repair those relationships.

"The most important thing that we have is to make sure our guys on our basketball team understand that we need to make sure we have relationships in order for us to move forward, and it starts by us being honest with each other."

Ray told the crowd of athletic department administration and faculty, coaches, Redhawks supporters and local media that his program's No. 1 rule is to tell the truth, and he started his formal introduction to his players by sharing exactly how he plans to form relationships with them, which included introducing them to his wife and sons.

"I said, 'You will be coming out here and having very uncomfortable lunches and dinners with my family, one-on-one. You'll be sitting next to Deacon and you'll be sitting next to Mason, and Mason will be throwing food on you and you've got to sit there and you've got to take it,'" Ray said amongst laughter from those in attendance. "Because we want to make sure that our guys understand that this is a family and in order for us to be a family we've got to go outside the boundaries and you've got to come to my home.

"We've got to go out to Taco Bell and have some lunch. We've got to make sure that we're not always just talking about basketball because my job as a coach here at Southeast Missouri State is to develop. That's the No. 1 thing -- develop players. And the development of players doesn't just happen on the court, it happens off the court, too. One of the biggest reasons I got in to college coaching is that I wanted to be a mentor to young men."

Ray pointed out that 71 percent of Division I men's basketball players grew up in a single-parent home and that their first experience of a male authority can come from a coach.

"I've got to make sure that I build a relationship with them so that they know I'm looking out for them," Ray said.

Ray, who was one of three finalists on the university's campus over the last two days and one of 11 candidates interviewed for the job, already spent time watching film on the Redhawks.

"I got a chance to see some of their guys' style of play, some of their strengths, some of their weaknesses, and we'll sit down and I'll talk to those guys about some of the things that I saw, but right now I'm not really as concerned about the things on the court," Ray said. "I'm really more concerned about the things off the court, making sure guys are on pace academically to do the things that they need to do. It's more about building that relationship. The basketball will take care of itself because we don't play until November. Right now we've got to get a chance to know each other first and foremost."

Once he does finally take the court with his players, Ray will increase focus on the style his Redhawks will play.

"To me when we're talking about that we've got to make sure that we're finding what's the best fit for each individual guy. And then it's like not me being like stone cold, and what I mean by that is like, 'I want to play this way,'" Ray said. "I want to play this way, but then I start to evaluate the team and it's like, 'Hey, they're not capable of playing that way. What's the best way for us to succeed?' Once we get on the court and start to work with our guys we'll figure out what we want to play but we want to play fast, we want to be up-tempo, we want to play pressure defense and we want to make sure we get out and attack in transition. Now, what are we going to do in the half-court setting? I don't know yet. But to me I know I want to make sure our guys have freedom to go make plays."

Although the Redhawks had their worst season since the 2010-11 season last year with a 13-17 record and 7-9 in conference, Ray is enthusiastic about the talent that remains on the roster and will hopefully remain with him.

"When I talked to people about the job here at Southeast Missouri State, they said it's a sleeping giant. A sleeping giant," Ray said. "I think we have to make sure that we do everything we can to make that come to fruition."