Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team falls to conference rival Murray State

MURRAY, Ky. -- The Murray State men's basketball team promptly delivered a message to Southeast Missouri State on Saturday night at the CFSB Center with its hot shooting from beyond the arc.

The Racers made 9 of their first 11 3-pointers and were 11 of 16 from beyond the arc in the first 20 minutes, as they cruised to an 83-56 victory over the Redhawks, which led coach Rick Ray to re-evaluate how he and his coaching staff relay their scouting report to their players.

"We talked extensively about making No. 2 [Jeffery] Moss and No. 23 [Justin] Seymour bounce the basketball," Ray said. "You can't close out hard enough to them, so if you get beat off the drive, we'll accept that fact. But for these guys to sit there and measure up and shoot 3s in our face, we just can't do that. So we did a poor job of carrying out scouting assignments, but that's also on the coaching staff as well.

"At some point in time, if you keep flunking a class, then it's also got to be on the teacher because at the end of the day, that's what we all are, teachers. We've got to be culpable in it, too, so we've got to find a different way to deliver the message to make sure our guys are understanding that."

Moss, who made seven 3s in MSU's 78-72 win over Southeast on Feb. 4, made his first three 3s to start the game. His third 3-pointer came 3 minutes, 41 seconds into the game to give the Racers a 11-7 lead, and the Redhawks never got closer than four points the rest of the way.

Moss was 5 of 7 from beyond the arc in the first half. He finished the game 6 of 10 and had 20 points.

"It's different ways that some people learn," Ray said. "Some people learn by hearing, some people learn by seeing, some people learn by doing and so we've got to figure out what's the best way for individually guys to learn and what's the best way for our team to learn. But right now, clearly the message is not being delivered."

Seymour's first triple with 12:15 left in the first half gave MSU a double-figure lead at 20-9. Seymour drained 3s on the next two Racer possessions and went 3 of 4 from 3 in the opening half.

MSU extended its lead to as much as 27 on a Wayne Langston basket with 3:56 left in the half and led 48-25 at the break after Gee McGhee hit a 3 in the closing seconds. McGhee led all scorers with 23 points off the bench on 9-of-11 shooting. He was 4 of 4 from 3 on the night.

Southeast opened the second half on a 13-6 run, and back-to-back 3s by freshmen Eric McGill and Tony Anderson made it 54-38 with 14:27 remaining. But it never got any closer.

The Racers' largest lead of the night was 28. They finished shooting 57.1 percent from the floor and 58.3 percent (14 of 24) from 3-point range.

Southeast shot 38.9 percent and was 5 of 17 from beyond the arc.

"Offense don't really matter if you aren't playing defense unless you're an NBA team and you can just come out and get 120 points every night," said junior forward Joel Angus, who finished with a team-high 17 points on 8-of-11 shooting. "Defense is the main thing. Offense, that'll take care of itself if we get stops."

The Redhawks were without redshirt junior forward Trey Kellum, who has started the last 22 of the 23 games he's played in, as he was sidelined with a concussion.

"Obviously it hurts not having Trey in there, so it shortens your rotation but they've got to understand that the hardest part for us is when we get down defensively, they try to make it up on the offensive end," Ray said. "And so we kind of get out of what we can do, and so now guys start making individual plays. And ... now there's kind of a snowfall effect because now it gets worse because we're not scoring on the offensive end because we're doing some things we can't do offensively because we're trying to make up for the defensive end."

MSU improved to 14-12 and 8-5 in the Ohio Valley Conference while the Redhawks' fifth consecutive loss dropped them to 5-21 and 2-11 in the OVC.

"The season has been tough overall, but when you're losing like this, you've got to get something out of it," Angus said. "We just want to remain positive even though it might be hard. Just remain positive, keep our heads high and just keep working. We can only go up. We can only get better. Things can't really get any worse than they are as far as record and stuff."

Southeast hosts SIU Edwardsville at 7 p.m. Thursday and Eastern Illinois at 4:15 p.m. Saturday before concluding the regular season at Austin Peay on Feb. 27.

"Three games left," junior guard Antonius Cleveland said. "Either we're just going to get the three over with or go out there and try to play. ... I think that we're going to go out there and play hard."