Southeast Missouri State men's baskettball team loses heartbreaker to EKU

The Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team held Eastern Kentucky's leading scorer without a single point for the first 19 minutes, 34 seconds of the second half of the teams' game Saturday night.

But EKU senior guard Glenn Cosey made two free throws with 26 seconds to go to tie the game and came up with a basket when it mattered most. He banked in a shot from well beyond the arc with less than a second remaining to help the Colonels defeat the Redhawks 79-78 at McBrayer Arena in Richmond, Ky.

"I didn't think that we deserved to lose tonight on a luck shot, that's for sure," Southeast coach Dickey Nutt said. "They made the plays down the stretch. We just couldn't hold them there in that last minute, 30 seconds, but I do think that we really, really played well and if we can do that continuously and consistently, then we still have a chance. I know that our record right now puts us up against a wall, but we still have a very good basketball team, a very capable basketball team -- it's just a matter of putting it together."

The Redhawks dropped to 12-11 overall and 3-6 in the OVC while EKU, the preseason OVC favorite, improved to 16-7 overall and 7-3 in the OVC.

The game featured double-figure leads by both teams. Southeast erased a 14-point first-half deficit and led by as many as 11 in the game.

EKU trailed 72-62 with 3:57 remaining before the Colonels hit three of their eight 3s in the final minutes to overcome the Redhawks.

The teams traded baskets after EKU knotted it at 74-74 with 55 seconds to go. Lucas Nutt made to runner to give Southeast a 76-74 lead and a putback by Tyler Stone with 7 seconds to go made it 78-76 before Cosey's miracle shot.

Cosey scored the last five points for the Colonels after Southeast's defense stifled him in the second half.

"We made some adjustments at halftime and then we held him scoreless," Nutt said. "He hadn't hit one all half and then he pulls up at half court and hits that shot. Obviously that's what good players do, but it's a sickening way to lose the game. But we'll bounce back. I have full confidence we're going to bounce back."

Southeast trailed by as many as 36-22 with 4:13 left in the first half but cut the deficit to seven points by halftime.

The Redhawks used a 26-8 run to start the second half to give themselves a 63-52 advantage -- their largest lead -- with 9:57 remaining, and they led by no fewer than seven points until the final few minutes of the game.

Jarekious Bradley led Southeast with a career-high 32 points on 12-of-15 shooting, including 3 of 4 behind the arc.

"I thought Jarekious Bradley was really good tonight," Nutt said. "I thought that they had no answer for him. ... I really thought the most valuable player tonight was Lucas [Nutt]. He handled that basketball, and he played so well tonight."

Stone scored 15 points and grabbed five rebounds while Nutt finished with 13 points and five assists.

Bradley, who finished with eight rebounds, didn't score in the final 11:19 of the game, but it wasn't a case of Southeast's offense being shut down as several players chipped in down the stretch with critical points. The Redhawks shot 56 percent from the field and outscored EKU by 20 points in the paint.

"Other people were doing their job and that's the thing about it," Nutt said of Bradley's scoring drought at the end of the game. "When people make adjustments, we don't force shots. ... We kept scoring."

The loss was the second at the buzzer this season for Southeast. Missouri State's Dorrian Williams banked in a 3 against the Redhawks to give his team the win on Dec. 29.

"At this moment right now you can't say anything," Nutt said. "You've just got to hurt and let that hurt happen. The thing that I did tell them is that I was very, very proud of their effort. I thought we came into a very tough place to play and I thought we dominated the game, especially in the second half. We controlled the game and we had our chances. If you stay in it long enough things like this will happen to you, and hopefully we can turn around and it'll happen to us one of these days, but we've got to make our own luck.

"I'm a firm believer that the sun is going to come up tomorrow, and as our long as our team is playing like this -- if you finish it's good enough. I thought we played our best. I thought there were just a couple plays here and there we kind of broke down, but I thought our best was good enough. These guys have nothing to be ashamed of. Absolutely nothing. To come on the road and have a chance to win this ballgame -- we felt like we had it. We felt like we had the game."

Southeast's next game is against OVC West opponent SIU Edwardsville. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. Thursday at the Vadalabene Center in Edwardsville, Ill. The Redhawks beat the Cougars (8-15, 4-5 OVC) 82-78 on Jan. 23.

"What I don't want to do is get beat again Thursday night because of tonight," Nutt said. "We've got to somehow or another put this behind us."