Red-hot Redhawks trounce Tennessee Tech

To think that just a year ago, Southeast Missouri State and Tennessee Tech were playing in an epic overtime thriller for the Ohio Valley Conference championship and to put an end to a March Madness drought.

Now when both teams played on Thursday, Feb. 8, at the Show Me Center, it was to keep the hopes of returning to the conference tournament alive.

The Redhawks, wearing red at home for the first time all season, proved that looking good leads to feeling good and playing great, as they dispatched the Golden Eagles 88-69. With the win, the Redhawks (8-16, 3-8) sit in eighth place with the tiebreaker over Southern Indiana, which has them currently in the OVC bracket as the final seed.

Evan Eursher and Rob Martin each led the Redhawks with 16 points. SEMO had five different players score in double-digits during the game.

"Coach [Brad] Korn told us to just put a whole 40 minutes together and play together on the defensive end," Martin said.

Everything worked the Redhawks’ way. They out-rebounded TTU 30-22, went 8-of-15 from the three-point line, and won handily despite attempting a total of six free throws.

"It's just shooting with confidence," Martin said, "believe in your teammates, uplifting your teammates if they miss a shot, so that was a huge thing."

Eursher chalked it up to three things, "energy, poise, and ball movement."

"Energy came out great, Eursher said. "We stayed poised. In the first half, a lot of our buckets came late in the shot clock. We didn't rush it, and the ball movement, the ball moved, everybody touched it. We got to both sides of the force."

The Redhawks started the game red-hot with a 12-2 run to open the first half. How they start games has historically been a challenge for the Redhawks all season but this time, they were in control from the beginning.

"I just think our guys were locked in from the start and ready to go," Korn said. "Tech being depleted, I think helped. They're in the zone and we were very prepared for the zone. We're making the right plays, we're executing. We were getting the ball into the high post. So I think our guys did a great job of approaching practice the right way and the prep was great for it. We were able to apply it in the game."

It took Josh Early two minutes to score as many points as he did in SEMO’s home loss against Western Illinois this past weekend. He went on to finish with 14 points on 7-of-10 shooting and a game-high eight rebounds.

"We rely heavily on Josh to do everything," Korn said. "You're supposed to rely on the senior force to do everything. Josh has got to rebound, he can, and did today and has really about the last seven or eight games."

Braxton Stackler scored all of his 11 points in the first half to go with Eursher's 10, which combined to equal SEMO’s halftime lead (49-28).

The Redhawks' domination was punctuated in the final seconds of the first half when Adam Larson slammed a dunk and Eursher followed it up with a half-court buzzer-beater.

A BJ Ward layup capped a 16-5 run to open the second half with a 65-34 lead. The Redhawks maintained their 30-point separation for much of the remainder of the game until eventually dipping to merely 19 points.

Ward finished the game with 13 points, a second straight game in which the freshman guard established a career-high. With the injuries to Aquan Smart and Dylan Branson, young guards such as Ward, Stacker, Eursher, and Marqueas Bell, all underclassmen who are earning more playing time as of late, are building towards the future while contributing to the present.

"You see them getting better throughout the season," Korn said. "The last three games, you really see Braxton kind of take a step. So it's exciting to see those four guys, two sophomores and two freshmen, to be able to play against grown men like Tech tonight, just the way they've approached practice each and every day with a good attitude and mentality to get better... It's nice to see they are still getting better, even in February."

The Redhawks remain home to take on Cape Central alum Kinyon Hodges and the Tennessee State Tigers on Saturday, Feb. 10. Smart and Branson are expected to remain out with their injuries.

"I would imagine Aquan would be back sooner than Dylan but I'm not exactly sure of a timeframe for either one of them," Korn said.