Rugged schedule hopefully prepared Redhawks

Austin Peay men's basketball coach Dave Loos points out that the Governors are a work in progress after rolling to consecutive Ohio Valley Conference regular-season titles.

All Southeast Missouri State acting coach Zac Roman sees is the OVC's premier coach getting ready to bring another impressive team to the Show Me Center tonight.

The Redhawks (2-4) will try to upset Austin Peay (3-2) as the squads begin their OVC schedules at 7:45 p.m.

"To me, they're probably the best-coached team in the OVC. Coach Loos does a great job with those guys," Roman said. "Coach Loos gets the most out of his team.

"They're going to execute on both ends every possession. We have to bring it."

Loos doesn't rule out a three-peat for a squad that went a combined 32-8 in OVC regular-season play the past two years and won the title by three games each time.

But Loos said the Govs face plenty of challenges in trying to replace three starters, including second-team all-OVC performer Derek Wright, arguably the league's premier pure point guard last season.

"We definitely miss Derek Wright. We're not going to have anybody that will fully replace him," said Loos, whose squad won the OVC tournament title a year ago. "Losing three starters, that's always a chore.

"We have seven first-year players, which usually results in some inconsistency. We've played very well at times and not so well at others. We had some work to do, but we're working at it."

Loos -- the OVC's dean of coaches who is in his 19th season at Austin Peay -- had plenty to work with despite the graduation losses.

That starts with 6-foot-5, 225-pound senior power forward Drake Reed, a two-time first-team all-OVC selection who was the conference's player of the year as a sophomore.

Reed continually puts up big numbers despite usually playing against taller players. He is averaging 19.2 points and eight rebounds per game while shooting 59.7 percent from the field.

"He's been a horse," Loos said. "He's kind of doing it all."

Wes Channels, a 6-3 junior guard who averaged 11 points off the bench last year, has bumped up his scoring to 17.2 points per game.

Channels is shooting 38.2 percent from 3-point range (13 of 34), while 6-5 senior forward Kyle Duncan and 6-0 sophomore guard Caleb Brown both have hit 7 of 16 3-pointers for 43.8 percent.

"They lost their point guard, but Drake Reed is already having a great year and Channels is going to be there," Roman said. "Even though they lost some good players from last year, I think they're still a very good team.

"It's going to be a big challenge for us, but we're excited about getting the conference season started."

Loos also expects a challenge from the Redhawks, even though they are undermanned with only eight scholarship players seeing action through the first six games of the season.

Loos remembers what happened during last year's meeting at the Show Me Center, as Southeast beat Austin Peay 121-116 in a triple-overtime thriller, handing the Govs one of their four conference losses.

The two Southeast players who did the most damage in that game -- senior forward Jaycen Herring scored 29 points and senior guard Kenard Moore had 28 while hitting 7 of 10 3-pointers -- still are around.

"I look at some tape ... they're scary to me," Loos said. "For instance, Moore can shoot it farther than I can throw it. Herring is a guy that can do some things. ... They've got some good players."

Following tonight's contest, the Redhawks close out a two-game OVC homestand when Tennessee State (2-3) visits Saturday night.

The Tigers advanced to last year's OVC tournament championship game, losing to Austin Peay.

"It's a very tough first two conference games for us," Roman said.

Roman believes a brutal nonconference schedule -- three of Southeast's losses were at major-conference teams Iowa, Kansas State and New Mexico -- has helped prepare the Redhawks for the OVC.

"That's why we play those kinds of teams, to get ready for conference," Roman said.

Tonight he'll begin to find out if it paid off.