Southeast Missouri State men's basketball takes fourth straight OVC loss at hands of Eastern Kentucky

RICHMOND, Ky. -- The Eastern Kentucky men's basketball team entered Saturday's contest against Southeast Missouri State as the Ohio Valley Conference's top team in 3-point field goal percentage and had knocked down the second-most of any team in the league.

But it wasn't the Colonels' shooting that made the difference against the short-handed Redhawks, who were down to seven available players due to suspensions.

Southeast (2-14, 0-4 OVC) couldn't find a way to stop EKU inside, didn't have much luck scoring and didn't have many options left on the bench to fix the problems in an 88-69 road loss at McBrayer Arena.

"If you look at this game, it really boiled down to our lack of physicality. Just looking at these stats right here," Ray said. "Points in the paint -- physicality -- 42-26. Second-chance points -- 15-4. Physicality. But the thing that you really look at, if you take away the 3-point opportunities, we were 16 of 41 on 2-point field-goal attempts, so that's 39 percent. They were 24 of 41 on 2-point attempts, so that's 58.5 percent. That's the game right there. They're finishing their 2-point opportunities at the rim and we're not."

The Redhawks found out Friday after their film session that starting freshman point guard Eric McGill, freshman forward Jaylin Stewart and freshman guard Robby Dosier would not play against the Colonels due to a violation of team rules, according to senior guard Isiah Jones.

Ray would not elaborate on the suspensions, saying, "We're gentlemen and we don't air people's dirty laundry," and that he did not know whether the three players would miss more than one game because of it.

"It's not about basketball to him," Jones said. "It's more about teaching us life lessons that we're going to take further on past basketball so we all understand. We all stuck together. Even though some guys didn't play they stayed into the game. We've just got to stick it out, keep fighting."

Southeast jumped out to an early 5-0 lead and held a 10-6 advantage after a layup by junior guard Antonius Cleveland with 16 minutes, 33 seconds left in the first half.

The Colonels scored 16 unanswered points after that to take a 22-10 lead and they led the remainder of the way.

The Redhawks snapped their 4:32 scoring drought on an Angus layup to cut it to 10.

EKU led by as many as 16 after a Ja'Mill Powell 3 and a three-point play by Jarelle Reischel to make it 34-18 with 6:11 to go before the break.

Southeast got as close as seven on Jones' third triple of the half with 2:20 to go, but Javontae Hawkins knocked down a jumper at the buzzer to give EKU a 43-33 lead heading into

halftime.

"It shortens your rotation and then some guys are going to have to go out there and have more opportunity to fail when they're not doing some of the things they need to do," Ray said of his shorthanded team, "but you've got to let them go out there and kind of drown and hopefully they can get back above water."

The Redhawks got within six points twice in the second half, including at 55-49 with 13:46 remaining after freshman forward Tony Anderson knocked down four consecutive free throws.

Eastern Kentucky responded with an 8-0 run to regain a double-figure lead for good, with the advantage swelling to 20 with 3:49 remaining.

The Colonels improved to 11-7 and 2-1 in conference with the victory.

They were led by forward Reischel, who had 21 points on 8-of-14 shooting and six rebounds. Guard Jaylen Babb-Harrison added 18 and forward Nick Mayo finished with 15 points and seven rebounds.

EKU finished 9 of 25 from beyond the arc (36 percent) and shot 50 percent from the field. They outscored Southeast 42-26 in the paint.

"I would say just not staying in front of the guys on the perimeter, allowing them to get paint touches and dropping it off to their bigs," Cleveland said of the paint points. "Basically it all starts up top on the perimeter."

Cleveland, who's playing with an injured right wrist and said he's basically "playing with one arm," finished with a season-low four points and shot 1 of 8 from the floor. It snapped a stretch of seven double-figure scoring games for him.

He said he fell on his wrist during the Belmont game on Dec. 31 and it has steadily gotten worse to where he can hardly bend it.

Southeast shot 38.6 percent from the floor and 37.5 percent (6 of 16) from beyond the arc. Jones, who finished with 19 points, was 6 of 16 from the field and made 3 of 10 3-point attempts.

Forward Joel Angus finished with 12 points and eight rebounds and Anderson had career-high 11 points and six rebounds.

Starting forwards Trey Kellum and Angus each fouled out by the 3:41 mark of the final period, leaving the Redhawks with only the five players on the court available and two players with four fouls.

Ray said there's a variety of reasons why his players are struggling to score inside, in addition to Cleveland's injury obviously hindering him.

"One is we've got to embrace the physicality," Ray said. "I think sometimes we're expecting calls and we're expecting not to get fouled, so we've got to make sure we go in there embracing the physicality of the other team. And I think the other part of it is, like, some of our guys are just weak at this point in time. Tony's not a guy that's a strong, explosive kid right now. Joel's a strong kid, but he's not an explosive kid. Then [forward] Trey [Kellum's] just been having a hard time finishing. I don't know if it's the [protective face] mask or anything that's changed, but he's getting a lot of opportunities at the rim that he's got to finish."

The Redhawks return to action Wednesday when they host Jacksonville State at 7:45 p.m.