Adeoye's energy sparks Southeast Missouri State men's basketball team in lopsided win

Southeast Missouri State senior forward Aaron Adeoye stood a few feet behind the 3-point line as his teammate, junior guard Isiah Jones, stepped up to shoot a pair of free throws with 6 minutes, 17 seconds remaining in the first half of Saturday night's game against Alabama A&M.

Adeoye, who had just given Southeast its largest lead thus far in the ballgame at 11 points with a jump shot a minute earlier, yelled to his teammates, "Hey, let's get ready to turn up on D."

The Redhawks heeded Adeoye's advice, and after Jones sank one of his free throws they came up with steals and fast-break baskets on back-to-back possessions -- an Adeoye dunk and Jarekious Bradley layup -- to take a 16-point lead.

Southeast held a double-figure advantage the remainder of the game and defeated the visiting Bulldogs 85-51 at the Show Me Center.

"I just try to play hard and have energy because that's one thing you can control," said Adeoye, who finished with 12 points, seven rebounds, two steals and two assists. "When someone brings energy it can be contagious, so hopefully that can spread out to the rest of the team and then I've done my job because we've got scorers, we have a big guy, we have people off the bench that are good, so when we get everybody going we can be really great."

The Redhawks never trailed in the game, which was tied twice early.

After the Bulldogs knotted the game at 9-9, sophomore guard Jamaal Calvin entered the game and sparked a 12-3 run with a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 12:36 to play in the opening half.

Southeast Missouri State's Nino Johnson grabs a rebound away from Alabama A&M's Baryn Houston during the first half Saturday, Nov. 29, 2014 at the Show Me Center. (Fred Lynch)

Calvin hit another 3 during that stretch along with senior guard JJ Thompson.

"I thought Jamaal Calvin came in and kind of opened things up a little bit, stretched the defense a little bit and made some shots," Southeast coach Dickey Nutt said.

Calvin finished with 11 points, all in the first half, on 3-of-6 shooting.

Southeast extended its lead to 30-14 after the transition baskets following Adeoye's message for his teammates. The Bulldogs pulled within 12 points with 1:51 left in the half, but the Redhawks closed out the half with seven unanswered.

Adeoye came up with a steal and Bradley scored with 47 seconds left, and then Adeoye dunked off a miss by Thompson at the buzzer to make it 39-20.

"No question," said Nutt when asked if Adeoye's energy rubs off on his teammates. "At halftime I told our team that for the life of me, I want to see at least one time this year that somebody plays harder than Aaron. I don't have one guy on this team who's played as hard as he does. Now, we all played fairly hard, but Aaron goes to another level. ... And I'll tell you, it was the perfect exclamation right before the half -- that follow, tip-back dunk. That's just the story of Aaron, and that's what Aaron brings to our team."

Southeast never led by fewer than 17 points in the second half.

Southeast Missouri State's Josh Langford tries to shoot but is fouled by Alabama A&M's Rakiya Battle during the first half Saturday, Nov. 29, 2014 at the Show Me Center. (Fred Lynch)

The Redhawks took a 30-point lead with 10:46 remaining in the game on a pair of free throws by senior forward Josh Langford, who finished with 10 points and five rebounds.

"I didn't see this coming. I certainly didn't expect this," Nutt said. "I warned my team for the last 48 hours that this team is a very dangerous team. They've been able to play Georgia Tech, Dayton, Jacksonville State all very, very close for awhile. ... But I felt like we were going to be in for a dog fight. I didn't see this coming that we were able to increase that lead to 30 points and then stay with it."

Southeast was able to empty its bench and had 13 players score in the lopsided contest.

The Redhawks shot 42.4 percent (25 of 59) on the night and 7 of 20 (35 percent) from behind the arc. They shot just 60.9 percent (28 of 46) from the free-throw line.

"Offensively I think we did OK, but we weren't really worried about offense," said Bradley, who finished with a game-high 17 points and eight rebounds. "We were worried about defense. Defense, defense, defense, and rebounding."

Southeast outrebounded the Bulldogs 49-38. The Redhawks had 22 second-chance points off 18 offensive rebounds. The Bulldogs' 19 turnovers led to 28 points for Southeast.

A&M was held to 31.3 percent (15 of 48) from the floor, made only 1 of 12 3-point attempts and shot 48.8 percent (20 of 41) on free throws.

Forward Ladarius Tabb led the Bulldogs with 16 points and six rebounds while guard Tyler Davis chipped in 10 points.

"They did have some open shots and they missed some, but for the very most part I thought every shot was contested, rushed and we were able to rebound the ball pretty good," Nutt said.

The Redhawks travel to Columbia, Missouri, for a 7 p.m. game against Missouri on Tuesday.

"Coming into Mizzou, no matter how many times we've lost to them, they put on their pants just the same as we do," Johnson said. "We're going to come in and fight and play hard the whole 40 minutes, and hopefully come out on top."