Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team fails on attempt to reserve spot in OVC tournament

CHARLESTON, Ill. -- It appeared as if the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team was poised to secure its spot in the Ohio Valley Conference tournament Sunday night.

The Redhawks maintained a lead for 31 minutes, 25 seconds in their game against Eastern Illinois on Sunday night, but never led in the final six minutes when they began to play like an entirely different team.

The Panthers capitalized when Southeast got careless and rushed on the offensive end, and defeated the visiting Redhawks 73-65 at Lantz Arena to keep the eighth and final tournament berth unclaimed.

"Find a way to lose, don't we?" Southeast coach Dickey Nutt said. "I don't have to tell you how disappointed we are, but it's the same song, second verse, so to speak. All the way back to the Murray game, up 10 with 10 minutes to go and we find a way to stop playing the way we were playing the whole 30 minutes."

The Redhawks held a 41-35 advantage at halftime and built the lead to nine points on a dunk by sophomore guard Antonius Cleveland with 15:16 remaining that made it 49-40.

EIU got back-to-back 3s from senior guards Reggie Smith and Dylan Chatman on its next possessions to cut the deficit to three.

The Redhawks regained an eight-point lead with 12:05 left on a 3-pointer by senior guard Jarekious Bradley, who finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds, but couldn't pull away from the Panthers.

EIU got within two after freshman guard Cornell Johnston buried a 3-pointer with 6:48 left and Cleveland was called for a foul seven seconds later trying to make a save on a Bradley miss, and Smith made a pair of free throws in a one-and-one to knot it at 62.

The Panthers took their first lead of the night when junior forward Trae Anderson made a layup with 5:06 left to go up 64-62.

Southeast didn't handle the deficit well, rushing shots on offense and going 1 for 11 the remainder of the contest.

"I felt like when we got down two or three points it changed like, 'Time to just start shooting shots instead of sharing the ball and doing stuff that got us the lead,'" Bradley said.

Senior forward Nino Johnson came up with a block that led to a transition layup for Cleveland with 3:52 left, but the sophomore was called for a charge and the tying basket was negated.

"I thought that when we didn't get that call to tie the game up, I thought from there on we really, really unraveled," Nutt said. "And what I mean by that is offensively we were really good up until that point and then now all the sudden we're trying to make one-on-one plays. That's not our game. That's not what we [do], so I had to call timeout and get that corrected. We finally get that corrected, we get the ball inside where it belongs and then we get a walk called."

EIU junior forward Chris Olivier scored following Nutt's timeout, but senior guard Isiah Jones made his fourth 3-pointer of the game to pull the Redhawks within 66-65 with 3:16 left.

Jones' 3 was the only points Southeast scored in the final 7:47 of the game. Johnson traveled in the paint while Cleveland missed four baskets -- three 3s -- in the final two and a half minutes.

"Trying to make something happen when things don't go just right, things start to tense up a little bit," Nutt said. "That just goes back to not winning enough, not having that confidence to win. And just relax and say, 'Hey, we're going to win.' We just haven't had enough winning with this basketball team."

The Redhawks shot 38.8 percent from the field and were 8 of 25 from 3-point range. They averaged 18 3-point attempts entering the game and after making 5 of their first 8 attempts the Redhawks made just 3 of 17 the remainder of the game.

Freshman guard Marcus Wallace and Cleveland each had 14 points while Jones had 12.

"We've just got to stay together. We've just got to stay together when adversity hits us," Bradley said. "Don't panic. Just stay together, stay aggressive and don't get too casual and try to do the home run play. Just keep everything like it was when we was winning."

EIU shot 50 percent in the game and was 7 of 16 from behind the arc. Olivier and Anderson led the Panthers with 20 and 17 points, respectively, while Johnston finished with 12 and Smith had 10.

"Those big guys had their way, I guess, 20 and 17. We couldn't stop them," Nutt said. "We knew he was going left, game plan to stop him from going left and he went left anyway."

The Panthers, who had previously clinched a spot in the conference tournament, improved to 16-12 and 9-6 in the OVC. The win also secured EIU's second winning season since 2001.

Southeast dropped to 12-16 and 6-9 in conference as it lost its third consecutive game.

"We've still got another game to play, we've got a lot of basketball left, and it's all up to us," Cleveland said.

The Redhawks will play their final regular season game against Austin Peay (7-20, 2-11 OVC) on Saturday at the Show Me Center. Tip-off is set for 6 p.m. following the women's game.

"We're going to have to go out there and take it," Bradley said. "They're not going to give us nothing. We've got to take that win."