Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team falls to SIUE

Southeast Missouri State men's basketball coach Dickey Nutt pointed out familiar problems that have plagued his team throughout most of the season following the Redhawks' Ohio Valley Conference contest against SIU Edwardsville.

His team struggled to score for extended periods of time in the second half, allowed the Cougars too many open 3-pointers and offensive rebounds, and the result was a 75-61 loss at the Show Me Center that dropped Southeast to 9-12 and 3-5 in conference.

"We certainly looked like a team that has never played together before," Nutt said. "Attitude's good. The 'want to' is good. It's just a matter of putting it together and playing with confidence."

It was the first road win of the season for the visiting Cougars, who improved to 9-11 and 5-4 in the OVC.

The Redhawks trailed 35-34 at halftime, but SIUE opened the final 20 minutes of the game with seven unanswered points.

Southeast scored three points over the first five and a half minutes of the second half as the Cougars built up a nine-point lead.

A 3-pointer by junior guard Isiah Jones and a pair of free throws by junior guard JJ Thompson cut SIUE's lead to 46-42 with 12:33 to go, which was as close as the Redhawks got.

The Cougars answered with a jumper and back-to-back 3-pointers to extend their lead to 12 with 9:35 left.

"We didn't let it get too far away from us, and we stayed in the game, but later on down the stretch I think we needed to buckle down, and we sort of fell apart a little bit," sophomore guard Jamaal Calvin said.

Southeast cut the deficit down to six points with 3:04 to play on a basket by senior forward Nino Johnson, but SIUE hit 10 of 12 free throws over the final minutes to seal the win.

"You've just got to give me that all-out effort every play," Nutt said. "Right now we've got three or four guys getting it as hard as they can and a guy will take a play off. Then we replace that and four or five guys are getting it together and one's taking it off. You can't beat good teams. You look around the league and everybody's good. Everybody's good. There are no easy wins any more. You've got to play all out every night in order to win."

Neither team led by more than five points in the first half.

The Redhawks held a 34-30 lead with 1:45 remaining before halftime after Calvin hit his fourth 3-pointer, but SIUE regained the lead before the break with a 3 by Donivine Stewart, who finished with 15 points, and a layup by Kris Davis, who had a game-high 23.

"I thought Jamaal kept us in the game in the first half, shooting the ball," Nutt said about the sophomore, who had 12 points and connected on 4 of 5 from behind the arc in the first half. "But again, we've got to have some inside presence, some muscle in there that can score the basketball on a consistent basis."

Lacking on offense was Redhawks leading scorer Jarekious Bradley, who returned to the lineup after not traveling for Saturday's game because he missed a class. Bradley finished the game 1 of 10 from the field with three points.

He converted a 3-point play with 8:16 left in the game that pulled Southeast within 54-47.

"I told him, 'Sometimes life is crazy, and sometimes it happens that way. We've just got to get to that next day, and it's all a big test. It's a test when things aren't going right,'" Nutt said. " *... They did a good job of contesting and roughing him up a little bit, but those are a lot of shots that he normally makes. He just had a hard time."

Meanwhile SIUE hit 9 of 16 3-point attempts (56.3 percent). Davis and Stewart each had three and CJ Carr, who scored 18 points, knocked down a pair.

"If you're told to stay with that guy and you don't do it, that's a breakdown," Nutt said about the 3-point defense. "I can only allow you to have those kind of mistakes about two times, and then you've got to be replaced because you're not staying in tune to detail."

It was the second loss in a row for the Redhawks, who have now lost three of four conference games at home.

Nutt believed his players lacked chemistry Thursday.

"When you have good chemistry, you kind of know what that other guy's going to do, you know exactly where he's going to go. You kind of have that feel," Nutt said. "We felt like we played like we had no feel. Guys dribbling it off their foot, going into an area where we've never done that before, doing some things that we have never done before. Like I told them, 'Man, stop surprising me. Do what you're supposed to do. You know exactly where you're supposed to go, and exactly how you're supposed to play.' But I think the biggest thing right now is lack of confidence."

The Redhawks visit Austin Peay (7-14, 2-5 OVC) at 7 p.m. Saturday night.

"Just something's not clicking with our team, obviously, and I take full responsibility, but I'm going to tell you this: we're going to get back out there tomorrow," Nutt said. "We need to be the team that throws a wrench in everybody's game. And we've got to make some changes. We've got to change it up, play some more guys, see if we can't tweak this thing and get some chemistry back."