Southeast men's basketball team will try to make up ground in standings

~ The Redhawks are 10th in the OVC standings with seven games to play

The Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team has seven games remaining to determine whether it will make the Ohio Valley Conference tournament.

Southeast, the OVC West Division preseason co-favorite sits in fifth place in the West Division standings and 10th overall. The Redhawks (12-11, 3-6 OVC) need to move up into the top eight teams to make the conference tournament, which begins March 5 in Nashville, Tenn.

They have an opportunity to do that in games against two division opponents ahead of them in the standings on the road.

The Redhawks face SIU Edwardsville (8-15, 4-5 OVC) at 7 p.m. today and take on Eastern Illinois (8-14, 5-5 OVC) on Saturday.

"This is the time of year where the strong wins out," Southeast coach Dickey Nutt said. "We still have a lot of basketball to be played, and we're still confident about our team and hopefully we can steal these on the road, or steal something and that something good will happen to us."

Southeast split home games against these two opponents recently. The Redhawks defeated SIUE 82-78 on Jan. 23 and lost to EIU 77-74 on Jan. 25.

The Redhawks are coming off a 79-78 buzzer-beater loss to Eastern Kentucky, but Nutt said he is pleased with the way his players have responded in practice.

"I've been encouraged by the way we're playing right now," Nutt said. "I felt like we played good basketball last week, and we played good enough to win. We just didn't finish that game like we needed to.

"We let up with a minute to go. We had a couple of breakdowns with a minute to go, and we just didn't finish off a good game. When things like that happen and they hit a half-court shot on you, you've just got to scratch your head and hold on to that rope because better days are going to be in front of you."

Nutt has expressed to his team the importance of not only finishing games, but every possession, especially with an OVC tournament berth on the line.

"The biggest thing that we're stressing every day is how important every possession is," Nutt said. "Every opportunity to take a charge, every opportunity to block out, every opportunity to hit a free throw -- it's coming down to that. But I don't want our guys to play nervous."

Nutt has stressed playing with a sense of urgency throughout the season, but also has said he doesn't want his players to play tense. So how does he help his players understand the fine line between those two concepts?

"I think that we just talk about sticking to fundamentals. Just stick to your fundamentals," Nutt said. "Trust in the things you've done and what you've learned, and good things will happen to you. ... Like I've told our team, 'Hey, we're battle-tested, and as all that's gone on we're sitting here with a winning record, and we're still sitting here with seven games to go in our conference race and we've won three games so far, so let's don't panic. Just play as hard as you can.'"

Southeast likely will be without Paul McRoberts, who is scheduled to be out for the next two games with a partial tear in a ligament in his foot, Nutt said.

Nutt also said leading scorer Jarekious Bradley jammed his thumb but had a negative X-ray and has been practicing.