Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team carries some confidence into road trip to SIUE

There's no doubt that the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team has a bit more confidence as it heads to Edwardsville, Illinois, to face the SIU Edwardsville Cougars tonight.

The Redhawks have won two in a row to improve to 4-16 overall and 1-6 in the Ohio Valley Conference.

Now coach Rick Ray is ready to see what happens next and if his team will continue to improve. Southeast tips off vs. SIUE at 8 p.m. at the Vadalabene Center in a game that will be nationally-televised on the CBS Sports Network.

"Obviously we're going on the road now for a conference game, so it'll be interesting to see how guys react to that," Ray said. "It's amazing, no matter where a team is at a particularly time, guys get an over-inflated opinion of themselves based off of one thing, so we've got to be careful of not going in with a satisfied attitude or that 'we've arrived' attitude just because we won one conference game or that we won two games in a row."

The Redhawks picked up their first OVC win with a 68-60 overtime victory against UT Martin on Sunday to follow up their 84-61 victory over NAIA Hannibal-LaGrange last Tuesday.

Southeast primarily played man-to-man defense in both games and, although it's a small sample size, Ray's been impressed with the transition from playing mostly zone.

"The thing that I've impressed upon our team is our first six conference games, if you look at the stats for us defensively, teams were shooting almost 51 percent from the field against us, shooting 40 percent from the 3-point line and we were sending people to the free-throw line 17 times a game," Ray said. "Then these past two games, where we've been focusing on our man defense, we're holding people to 39 percent from the field, 25 percent from 3-point range and only sending people to the free-throw line nine times a game, so we've made huge improvements on the defensive end but now it's going to be interesting to see how they do that on the road."

Ray remains concerned with his team's inability to close out more defensive possessions with a rebound. The Redhawks average 24.4 defensive rebounds in their seven conference games while opponents average 10.7 offensive boards.

"I think a lot of times we get a stop but that stop is really not a stop because we haven't gotten a defensive rebound, so we're cheating ourselves from a great defensive performance by giving teams another opportunity at the rim," Ray said, "and we've got to do a much better job of being a better rebounding team."

The Cougars are in a similar state as the Redhawks. They enter tonight's game with a 4-16 record and are 1-7 in conference under first-year coach Jon Harris.

SIUE's lone conference win was a 67-65 decision at home against Eastern Kentucky on Jan. 16.

The Cougars have since lost to Austin Peay in overtime and Murray State. Besides an 86-63 loss to Tennessee Tech and the 70-54 loss to Murray, SIUE's other five losses have been decided by eight points or fewer.

SIUE is led in scoring by Burak Eslik, who's averaging 14.6 points on the season. Eslik, a 6-foot-4, 185-pound junior guard, is averaging 16.4 in conference action.

After being held scoreless in 21 minutes of action -- his second fewest minutes of the season -- against Tennessee Tech on Jan. 2 and scoring five against Belmont on Jan. 6, he went on a tear, scoring 23 vs. Tennessee State, 40 against Morehead State, 21 against EKU and 22 vs. Austin Peay. He was limited to three on 1-of-7 shooting against Murray.

He's shooting 43.8 percent from the field in conference and 44.4 percent from 3-point range; he's knocked down a team-high 35 3-pointers on the season. Sixteen of the triples were in conference and seven in the loss to Morehead. He's shooting 82.1 percent from the charity stripe.

"He's a guy that you can never, ever, ever relax on," Ray said. "If you think there's any point in time that he's not going to shoot the basketball then he shoots it. And he's not just a guy that can make shots. He's a guy that's pretty good off the bounce as far as attacking and creating offense, too."

Freshman guard Carlos Anderson, who's 6-4, 205, averages 10.8 points and 5.2 rebounds on the season and 13.5 and 5.3 in conference.

"He's a wing and he's a guy that's still trying to find himself a little bit, but you can tell how talented he is," Ray said. "And once he starts to figure some things out as far as, like, probing a defense, knowing when to attack, when to pull up and do some different things that'll come with season, he's going to be a really good player for them."

SIUE's offense ranks second-to-last in the conference, averaging 67.6 points in OVC games only. The Redhawks average 67 ppg vs. conference foes.

The Cougars allowed an average of 75.1 points and opponents shoot 46.0 percent through their first eight OVC games, which ranks eighth, while the Redhawks are last with 81.9 points and opponents shooting 48.2 percent.

"They're a team, to me, that's really sound on the defensive end," Ray said. "They're a great help team defensively, so we've got to be really careful of trying to drive into traffic and create turnovers for ourself by over-penetrating and making sure that we're sound on our jump stops and not getting charges, which ends up being a turnover."