Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team loses late lead, falls to Tennessee State

It's easy to look at the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team's loss to Tennessee State on Saturday and say the Redhawks had a four-point lead slip away in the final four minutes of the game. But Southeast coach Rick Ray sees it differently -- that his team's 72-66 defeat was a result of not sticking to the scouting report and creating separation from the Tigers in the first 36 minutes, leaving the door open for the Tigers to close out the game on a 14-4 run at the Show Me Center.

"I think the mistake that everybody looks at is like that we lost the game down the stretch," Ray said. "We lost the game through the course of the game because we could've been up even more if we'd have done some of the things we needed to do."

Ray said his team, which was coming off a 10-point loss to Belmont on Thursday, didn't adapt to the Tigers' contrasting attack.

"Totally different mindset and way of attack going between Belmont and Tennessee State," Ray said. "Tennessee State is a team that really likes to get the ball into the paint, the guards are very good getting into the lane, so we continually preached to our guys about closing out short and keeping people in front of us. I thought we did a really poor job of that today."

Southeast Missouri State's Trey Kellum shoots against Tennessee State's Demontez Loman during the first half Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016 at the Show Me Center. (Fred Lynch)

TSU outscored Southeast 34-24 in the paint, with 20 of the Tigers' paint points coming in the second half.

The Redhawks trailed 35-33 at halftime after a half that featured seven ties and four lead changes. They then scored the first seven points of the second half to go up 40-35, which was their largest lead of the game.

The Tigers responded with a 6-0 run of their own to regain the lead with 15 minutes remaining.

The lead changed four more times after that.

It was knotted at 57-all with 5:50 left on an Antonius Cleveland jumper to spark a brief run for the Redhawks. A pair of free throws by Trey Kellum with 3:43 remaining pushed Southeast's lead to 62-58.

The Tigers rattled off seven unanswered points, capped by their only 3-pointer of the second half, by Darreon Reddick with 2:07 left, to take a three-point lead.

Southeast freshman guard Eric McGill immediately answered with a jumpshot just inside the 3-point line to cut it to one, but TSU countered with a couple of baskets and the Redhawks couldn't recover.

Southeast Missouri State coach Rick Ray watches the game against Tennessee State with Isiah Jones, left, and Tony Anderson during the second half Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016 at the Show Me Center. (Fred Lynch)

"It's just really up to us to remain mentally tough in the last minutes when fatigue starts to kick in," Southeast junior forward Joel Angus III said. "You've just got to remain mentally tough."

Ray felt that his team didn't handle TSU's physicality well throughout the game and it affected them on the offensive end.

The Redhawks shot 40.7 percent from the floor and were 3 of 14 from beyond the arc.

"I didn't think we did a really good job of taking our cuts into the paint so we could have some opportunities to score around the basket," Ray said. "I thought they did a good job of denying us and we kind of just put our head down and drove into traffic and made some bad plays."

Cleveland and junior forward Joel Angus III each posted a double-double in the loss.

Cleveland had 21 points (50 percent shooting) and 10 rebounds while Angus had 13 points and 13 rebounds.

"We knew they were going to be a physical team, so the main thing was that we had to match their physicality and we had to gang rebound," Angus said. "Everybody had to. It was going to be a group effort."

McGill scored in double figures for the fourth game in a row, finishing with 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting and connecting on Southeast's only 3s of the game, making 3 of 5 from beyond the arc.

The Redhawks, who made 8 of 9 free throws in the first half, finished 15 of 25 from the charity stripe.

TSU shot 45.5 percent and only made 5 of 18 3s. The Tigers were 17 of 23 on FTs.

TSU improved to 10-4 and 1-0 in the Ohio Valley Conference.

"I just think the big thing for them is, like, them understanding carrying out a scouting report," Ray said of his team. "To me that's a huge part of this, like, taking what we talk about on paper, taking what we put up on a whiteboard, and actually carrying it out to the court. That's the next step in their maturation process."

The Redhawks (2-12, 0-2 OVC) face Morehead State and Eastern Kentucky on the road Thursday and Saturday, respectively.

"We're an inexperienced team so this is the first time we've had to play a dichotomy, two totally opposing teams, but we're about to do the same thing," Ray said. "I haven't watched a ton of tape at all on Morehead or Eastern Kentucky, but if you just look at the stats it looks like Morehead State is one of the better defensive teams in our conference and Eastern Kentucky is leading our conference in scoring, so I think what they can do is understand the mindset of going from team to team."