Southeast Missouri State men's basketball coach Rick Ray has had a busy summer

Rick Ray made one last stop in Starkville, Mississippi, last week before his wife and kids made the move to Cape Girardeau on Sunday.

Home for the first-year Southeast Missouri State men's basketball coach and his family is a two-bedroom apartment until they move into the house they recently closed on.

His young sons, Deacon and Mason, already have become staples around the team, attending the kids camp that was held Monday through Wednesday at the Student Recreation Center on campus.

For the former Mississippi State coach, it's an ideal way to end a summer spent working with his new team and recruiting across the country.

"Right now we're a little cramped up, but just getting the chance to be around them [is great]," Ray said in his office in the Show Me Center on Wednesday. "I think that's the hardest thing that people don't realize when there's any sort of a change is the family aspect of it, especially during that time period. May and June is the only time that we really can't be out recruiting, so that's a lot of time you get the chance to spend with your family, and obviously I didn't get a chance to do that because they were still in Starkville, Mississippi, and I was here."

Southeast Missouri State coach Rick Ray helps his son Mason take a shot during a youth summer basketball camp Wednesday, July 29, 2015 at the Student Recreation Center of Southeast Missouri State University. (Glenn Landberg)

Ray isn't complaining, though, as he spent some of that time signing a few new Redhawks to the current roster and acquainting himself with his players.

The month of July has been spent in gyms watching basketball in various cities.

"It's almost like, 'Where haven't I been?'" Ray said with a laugh when asked about some of the stops he'd made on the recruiting trail. "But the funny thing is, you'll go all the way out to Las Vegas to see a team that plays two hours away from you in St. Louis or in Memphis."

He said he and his coaching staff are lucky with the 2016 class because they're able to specialize on one need, which will be a shooting guard to replace the lone Redhawks senior Isaiah Jones.

Jones, along with the majority of the team, has been on campus for the past eight weeks for summer workouts.

Clyde Santee and Tony Anderson, who both signed with Southeast in May, did not participate in the summer session. Ray said Santee, who spent the past last season at Odessa College and the year before that at Massachusetts, is completing his academics in order to graduate from junior college, and Anderson, of Groveport Madison High School in Ohio, had prior obligations that kept him from coming to campus.

"What we wanted to do is we wanted to set the tone of the way we're going to work here, and the way you do that is in the summer here," Ray said.

Ray's been impressed with the players' progress in the weight room and commended strength and conditioning coach Ryan Johnson.

"He's really detail-oriented, and I think that's good because I think sometimes guys focus on the process rather than the technique, and people forget what strength and conditioning is supposed to be for," Ray said. "It's supposed to be for prevention of injuries, and so I think he's done a really good job of explaining why we're doing things in the weight room and then getting those guys to do the proper technique, so I've been really pleased with the gains that we had. He sent me an email yesterday where he said every guy that came in there set a new personal record for vertical jump, a new personal record for hang clean, so it's just good to see our guys' progress."

Ray's goal for the entire team was to achieve the "explosive power" needed on the court in the weight room.

Most of the newcomers needed to gain weight, and Ray was pleased with freshmen Robby Dosier, Eric McGill and Jaylin Stewart adding between 8 and 10 pounds over the eight weeks they were on campus.

Southeast Missouri State coach Rick Ray walks across the court with his son Deacon during a break at a youth summer basketball camp Wednesday, July 29, 2015 at the Student Recreation Center of Southeast Missouri State University. (Glenn Landberg)

Even more important to Ray was to make sure they all remained healthy. Aside from the usual bumps and bruises, the players are all injury-free.

"I really want to focus in on the recovery part of it because I want to make sure we're preventing injuries, and I think what happens a lot of times is people get fatigued in the summertime and it leads to injuries, and we want to make sure we're preventing injuries," Ray said. "We want to be proactive, not reactive."

It's been a challenge for Ray to work on many team-building activities or install the offense or defense without what he calls "two major components" in Santee and Anderson.

More emphasis has been placed on the players learning how to score in the motion offense that the Redhawks will run as well as in the fastbreak.

Ray said he "grew up" when he was an assistant under Royce Waltman at Indiana State, where they ran motion because Waltman had been an assistant under Bobby Knight. Ray also assisted on motion-offense teams under Matt Painter at Purdue and Brad Brownell at Clemson.

"All those guys are excellent motion coaches, and I kind of got away from it when I was at Mississippi State, and I'm going to go back to it," Ray said.

Southeast Missouri State coach Rick Ray and his son Mason watch a group of kids play a game during a youth summer basketball camp Wednesday, July 29, 2015 at the Student Recreation Center of Southeast Missouri State University. (Glenn Landberg)

"It gives guys a lot of freedom to go make individual plays," Ray added. "And I think with the advent of a new shot clock, the 30-second shot clock, I don't know if you're going to have enough time to set up and run sets as much, so I think to me you've got to be more of a team like the Golden State Warriors where you're flowing from an early offense right into your secondary offense into a motion."

Ray believes that everything he's taught his players over the past two months, in his two-hours-a-week sessions he could spend with them, will help the Redhawks improve from their 13-17 record last season, but he stresses the importance for each of them to focus on their individual progress.

"If you want to get a C, then just do the work in the class, but if you want to get an A, then you have to do all your homework outside of the class,'" Ray said about what he tells his players.

"We're seeing that with some guys, and then some guys have got to put in more time," Ray said. "It's easy for us because sometimes I'm walking across the rec to get my workout in, or we've got camp going on, and I can see guys working on their game. I'll walk by and I'll see a guy on the shooting gun. I'll see a guy over in the corner working on ball-handling. That makes me excited, because now I know they're investing their own time."