Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team finishes SEC stretch with loss to Ole Miss

The Ole Miss men's basketball team practically delivered a knockout punch to Southeast Missouri State in the first five minutes of their meeting Monday night.

The Rebels (8-3) used an early run to rout the Redhawks 82-51 in the inaugural Jack Jones Classic at the Landers Center in Southaven, Mississippi.

"Naturally I'm disappointed. I felt like we're a better team than that," Southeast coach Dickey Nutt said. "But we're going to give Ole Miss credit. They are very, very good. We didn't help things because we didn't shoot the ball very well and I thought we were just soft."

Ole Miss opened the game on a 19-4 run over the first 6 minutes, 5 seconds.

"They hit us in the nose and we never could recover. We never could make a game out of it at all," Nutt said. "...We didn't play very well tonight. Very disappointed with our performance."

The Redhawks cut the deficit to nine points with 6:58 left in the half with help from six points in a span of two minutes from senior forward Josh Langford off the bench, which made it 31-22.

Southeast was outscored 16-2 the remainder of the half, and the Rebels took a 47-24 lead into the break.

"The biggest thing I told them at halftime is, 'I want somebody to show me some heart. It looks like to me we're already heading off for Christmas break'," Nutt said. "I said, 'I'm not putting up with it. I'm going to play the guys that are going to play as hard as they can to show me all the heart in the world.' And I thought we did. I thought we at least competed in the second half and got with them a little bit better.

"It was hard. Sometimes it's not going to go for you. Sometimes you're going to have a bad night. And obviously every last one of us are having a bad night. The only thing you can pull out of their is your extreme hustle and attitude and heart, and I thought we showed some of that in the second half."

The Redhawks came within 19 points a few times in the second half, but never any closer.

Ole Miss shot 51 percent from the field while the Redhawks shot 31.7 percent (19 of 60).

The Rebels dominated Southeast at the free-throw line, connecting on 26 of 31 attempts (83.9 percent). Southeast made it to the charity stripe just once in the first half and finished the night 7 of 13.

The Redhawks were led in scoring by senior guard Jarekious Bradley with 10 points, eight of which came in the second half. Bradley was 3 for 15 from the floor and 2 of 6 from behind the arc

"We just could not -- it's absolutely got a lid on that basket right now, and I told our guys, 'Hey, the only thing you can do is keep shooting it,'" Nutt said. "I was pleased to see we adjusted a little bit and tried to get to the basket, but only shooting 13 free throws and they shoot 26, it just goes to show you we're settling for a shot where we don't need to be."

Ole Miss was led in scoring by a couple of Ohio Valley Conference transfers: Terence Smith from UT-Martin with 16 points and MJ Rhett from Tennessee State with 14 points.

A positive for the Redhawks was some extended playing time for a few freshman. Forward TJ Thomas played 22 minutes and had four bocks, guard Marcus Wallace finished with three points, three assists and two steals in 21 minutes and Ladarius Coleman had eight points in 19 minutes.

"There were some bright spots," Nutt said. "If I had to find some bright spots our bright spots were our freshmen played very well. Marcus Wallace, Ladarius Coleman, TJ Thomas -- those guys played very well. They weren't scared and they moved the basketball."

The Redhawks fall to 5-7 after their third consecutive loss. They host NAIA Harris-Stowe on Sunday at the Show Me Center.

"I've put them through a brutal, brutal schedule," Nutt said. "We're going to take a deep breath, we're going to enjoy Santa Claus, and we're going to get back to work and get back to Redhawk basketball. We're going to get back to our defense, and hey, no more SEC opponents for us this year. Now we get ready for OVC play."