Seeking some offense: Redhawks hope to shoot better in OVC home opener

Southeast Missouri State coach Gary Garner didn't expect the Redhawks to be an offensive juggernaut this season -- not after they lost their top three scorers from last year.

But never did Garner expect the Redhawks to have so much trouble getting their offense going.

"We're just really struggling offensively, and it's very frustrating," Garner said. "That's our only really glaring weakness right now."

Garner can only hope that the Redhawks (2-3, 0-1 Ohio Valley Conference) begin to climb out of their offensive funk tonight when they host Tennessee State (1-0, 0-0) in a 7:30 p.m. tipoff.

"It would be great if we could break out [offensively], because this is a very big game for us," Garner said. "It's our first conference home game, and we really need to win."

Garner believed going into the year that, if the Redhawks could improve defensively and on the boards, they would have a chance to put together a solid season.

Southeast, after allowing opponents to score an average of 68 points per game and shoot 46.1 percent from the field last year, is giving up 66 points per game (third in the OVC) and opponents are shooting 41.3 percent (sixth in the conference, but fourth is 41.2).

After being outrebounded by an average of two per game last year to rank eighth in the OVC in rebounding margin, the Redhawks are plus-0.6 this season, which has them second in the league. They are third in offensive rebounding with 13.8 per game.

But a woeful offense has negated what might well have been a hot Southeast start.

The Redhawks are averaging 62.4 points per game to rank eighth in the 11-team OVC, and their field-goal percentage of 38.0 is ninth.

Last year, Southeast averaged 70.4 points per game (fifth) and shot 46.8 percent (third). The Redhawks went 15-14, including 9-7 in the OVC.

"The thing is, when I look at us on tape, we're getting pretty good shots, we're just not getting them to go down," Garner said. "Guys that we thought would be making shots are not."

Only one Southeast player, junior guard Terrick Willoughby, is shooting even close to 50 percent. He is at 51 percent, which is impressive for a player who gets most of his shots from the outside.

Willoughby is shooting 53.8 percent from 3-point range (14 of 26), which has helped account for the Redhawks' better percentage from beyond the arc than inside it. Southeast's 40.6 3-point percentage is third in the league.

Senior guard Roy Booker, the Redhawks' leading scorer at 18.6 points per game -- Willoughby is second at 13.2 -- is shooting 35.2 percent from the field.

Southeast's top two scorers among inside players -- junior forward Andrais Thornton (7.2 ppg) and senior center Ketshner Guerrier (6.2 ppg) -- have shooting percentages of 44.8 and 40.6, respectively, even though they rarely attempt shots from more than several feet out.

"I really think Roy will start making shots. The shots he's missing, we see him making those in practice all the time," Garner said. "Ketshner, the shots he's getting, we thought he'd be at 55 or 60 percent. Eric Burton [a junior guard shooting 26.9 percent] is getting good shots, shots we saw him make in junior college. He's just not hitting them.

"No way do I think we're going to shoot 38 percent for the year. If we do, that will probably put us last in the league [Tennessee-Martin ranked last in the OVC last year at 41.7 percent]."

To put the Redhawks' collective offensively funk in perspective, none of Garner's previous eight teams at Southeast shot less than 45 percent, and none averaged less than 69.5 points per game.

Even Garner's worst season at Southeast -- 6-22 in 2001-02 -- produced 71.1 points per game and shot 45.5 percent, although that squad was done in by a porous defense.

"We're playing good enough defensively, we're rebounding good enough," Garner said. "I didn't think we'd be a great offensive team, but I thought we'd shoot 45, 46 percent, something like that.

"If we're shooting 45 percent right now, we're probably 4-1. I've been watching tape until I'm blue in the face. I'm hoping it's just like in baseball, where a hitter gets in a slump, and eventually comes out of it, and then everybody on the team feeds off of that and starts hitting."

It would help if the Redhawks started coming out of their slump tonight against a Tennessee State team that led the OVC in scoring last year with 75.4 points per game.

The Tigers have played just one game so far, a 72-63 win over Division III Fisk on Nov. 21. Junior guard Bruce Price, Tennessee State's top returning scorer at 13.7 points per game, poured in 25 points.

Clarence Matthews, a 6-foot-7, 250-pound junior college transfer center, added 16 points against Fisk.

"They've got a very talented, explosive team," Garner said. "Their guards {Price and senior Wayne Arnold] are very good, and Matthews is a load."

Noteworthy

* Junior guard David Johnson, who is the Redhawks' third leading scorer (9.7 ppg) and second-best 3-point shooter (42.9 percent), underwent hernia surgery on Tuesday.

Garner said it is not yet known how long Johnson will be sidelined. The junior college transfer has played in three of the Redhawks' five games.