Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team seeks first OVC victory at home

The Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team hasn't had as much trouble winning on the road through its first five conference games, but now the challenge is to defend the Show Me Center court from visiting Tennessee Tech.

The Redhawks, who are 0-2 at home in conference action, host the Golden Eagles at 6 p.m. Saturday for Hall of Fame Weekend and also as part of the Cardinals Caravan.

Southeast snapped a two-game losing streak with a 69-52 defeat of Jacksonville State on Wednesday night to improve to 2-3 in the conference and 8-10 overall.

"If we're going to make any kind of run at all you've got to take care of your home court, and we haven't been playing very well at home," Southeast coach Dickey Nutt said. "We have not been playing well at home. And I told our team [Wednesday], I said, 'For the life of me, whatever you're doing, change it.'

"We're going to try to do some things to help them change because they're a little bit somewhat distracted at home. Sometimes an immature team, it doesn't matter if you have seniors and juniors, we can all be immature. What I mean by that is maybe your friends and family are there and you don't play as hard, everything's too cool. I see that, and I tell them all the time, 'Cool will get you beat.' I want them to play with that fire and desire that we had [Wednesday]."

Southeast never trailed in its win against the Gamecocks, and made a season-high nine 3-pointers.

"It's like I told our team, 'You were a total team tonight,'" Nutt said following the win. "But it's easy to be a good teammate when you're winning. We started the game ahead of them and we never gave up the lead, and we were really good teammates. I said that the good teams are great teammates when things aren't going right, and that has yet to be determined. Sometimes when things don't go right we get quiet, and a quiet guy can't play this game."

The Golden Eagles (9-9, 1-4) lost their first three OVC games before defeating Austin Peay 72-56 on Saturday. They're coming off a 63-60 loss to UT Martin on Thursday.

Six-foot-10 junior center Charles Jackson averages 13 points and nearly 10 rebounds to pace TTU. Senior forward/center Dwan Caldwell averages 12 points, while junior guards Torrance Rowe and Josiah Moore each average about 10 points. Rowe and Moore are TTU's top 3-point shooters.