Southeast Missouri State men's basketball take's sixth straight loss at Tennessee Tech

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- Shortly after the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team got trounced by Tennessee Tech on Saturday night, coach Rick Ray summed his team's struggles up in one word: pride.

It's what he thinks the Redhawks were lacking in their 91-55 loss at the Eblen Center.

"We've got to have some pride in our own individual defense, our own individual offense, but more importantly have some pride in Southeast Missouri State," Ray said. "We're doing a poor job of representing this university and I've got to be able to figure out a way to get these guys to understand how important it is to wear that jersey."

The Golden Eagles never trailed in the game as they improved to 13-6 and 5-1 in the Ohio Valley Conference.

They scored the first 12 points of the game and were up 14-5 at the first media timeout 4 minutes, 40 seconds into the contest.

A 3-pointer by point guard Torrance Rowe with 14:34 left in the half put TTU ahead double figures the remainder of the game.

Guard Aleksa Jugovic, who entered the contest shooting 41.1 percent from beyond the arc, knocked down 3s on the next four Golden Eagle possessions to extend their lead to 32-10 with 10:32 to go before halftime.

He was 7 of 10 from beyond the arc in the first and scored 25 of his career-high 27 points in the first 20 minutes.

"The first thing we could've done is follow the scouting report and guard the best shooter we've played so far," Ray said. "He's a really good shooter but we left him wide open."

TTU was 10 of 20 from 3-point range in the first half while the Redhawks made just eight field goals (on 34 attempts) as they trailed 51-31 at the break.

Southeast finished the game 3 of 22 from 3-point range.

"Offensively we've got to understand who we are. We've got too many guys that are trying to do things that we can't do," Ray said. "We've got guys that can't really dribble the basketball trying to dribble the basketball; guys that can't shoot are shooting 3s, so we've got to understand who we are and what our limitations are on the offensive end.

"Playing a team like this you're not going to outscore them, so you've got to make them defend. They would guard us for 10 seconds, 15 seconds on the shot clock, and so we thought we were going to get back into the basketball game by scoring quick on the offensive end, and that's not us."

Southeast never got closer than 28 points in the second half and trailed by as many as 39.

"I think we did get a little outside of ourselves," junior guard Jamaal Calvin said, "but we need to just stay disciplined and stay calm whenever that does happen because they did jump out and we did get rattled."

TTU shot 54.8 percent from the floor and finished 14 of 34 from beyond the arc. The Golden Eagles' 14 3s tied a season high from their season opener against Piedmont College.

"We just need to move and guard our yard," Calvin said. "We're getting beat too much on the perimeter where our guys will beat us and drive in and kick it out. That's why they get open shots. We just need to guard our own yard, be disciplined and close out on the open shooters."

The Redhawks, who were outscored 40-34 in the second half, dropped to 2-16 and 0-6 in the OVC.

"I just simply wanted us to play better the second half and win the second half, and we couldn't even do that," Ray said.

Redshirt forward Trey Kellum tried to stay positive when discussing the lopsided, and sixth straight, loss.

"It's real hard to do," said Kellum, who finished with 18 points and five rebounds. "As long as we just take it one game at a time. You've got to kind of feel bad about it, but at the same time you've got to be able to look in the mirror and be like, 'You messed up, but you'll try to get better the next day.'"

The Redhawks return to action on Tuesday against NAIA Hannibal-LaGrange. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. from the Show Me Center.

"We know we don't need to be down about everything," Calvin said. "Of course we haven't won that many games, but we can't get down about it. We've just got to move to the next, try to get to the next one because this season's not over. We've got many games left to try to go out and win, so we're just trying to stay positive."