Southeast Missouri State men's basketball coach Rick Ray could point to a couple of statistics from his team's game against the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday night as the culprit for the Redhawks' latest loss.

"I thought we played a good first half there, did a really good job on the offensive rebounds," Ray said. "If you look at the stats across the board, we beat them in a lot of categories, but the thing that stands out is the fact that we had 17 offensive rebounds to their six offensive rebounds and still got outscored in the paint 34-18, so that means those offensive rebounds that we got we weren't able to finish at the rim on those offensive rebounds."

The Redhawks scored a season high but dropped to 0-4 on the season with an 83-74 loss to the Vaqueros (2-3) in Edinburg, Texas.

"We've just got to continue to come together as a team and eliminate the distractions that we've been having for our team," Ray said about his message to the team. "But this doesn't take away from what we're trying to do, our ultimate goal, which is to be a good Ohio Valley Conference basketball team. I thought we made strides offensively. We scored the most points we've scored this year with 74 points, but we've still got to clean up some things on our defensive end.

"Our guys have got to understand that this is a process and don't get flustered with the fact of what our record is. Obviously we all want to do better, but at the end of the day us being a good Ohio Valley Conference team is the ultimate goal."

Southeast held a 42-36 advantage at halftime, but the Vaqueros used an 11-5 run over the first 3 minutes, 41 seconds of the second half to tie it at 47-all.

The Redhawks were back up 52-47 exactly a minute later, after an Isiah Jones 3-pointer and a Ladarius Coleman jumper, and maintained their five-point lead at 56-51 with 14:25 left.

A layup and free throw by Shaquille Hines and a 3 from Antonio Green gave UTRGV the lead at 57-56 with 12:19 to play, and the Vaqueros never relinquished it.

The Redhawks, who shot 51.6 percent in the first 20 minutes of the contest, made just 31.6 percent of their second-half shots while the Vaqueros shot 62.1 percent in the second half and 56.1 percent in the game.

"I think we gave up some uncontested shots at times, but that's just some breakdowns in our rotation," Ray said. "The biggest thing is just the points in the paint. We've got to do a better job of taking away those opportunities. That team had 28 assists and 34 points in the paint, so we've got to do a much better job of securing the paint area."

Green knocked down a jumper and Dakota Slaughter followed with a four-point play to push the lead to seven 1:37 later.

Southeast forward Trey Kellum scored the next five points to make it 63-61 UTRGV, but the Redhawks never got any closer.

The Vaqueros led by as many as 12 points, 73-61, before Southeast rattled off nine unanswered points to pull within 73-70 with 4:19 to go.

UTRGV went back up five when Marcus Wallace went to the line for a one-and-one with 2:42 remaining. He missed the front end, and Green knocked down his fourth shot from beyond the arc to all but seal the win.

Kellum paced Southeast with 21 points on 9-of-12 shooting and had nine rebounds. He started and played 23 minutes, spending time on the bench with foul trouble.

"I thought Trey did a terrific job of finishing inside. He hit some short jump shots," Ray said. "The fact that he had 21 points in only 23 minutes speaks volumes. We've got to keep him out of foul trouble and on the court."

Isiah Jones had 17 points. He shot 7 of 15 and was 3 of 7 from 3-point rage.

"I thought Hoopy did a really good job of starting off as the point guard and hitting some timely shots, and he really did a good job in the second half of shot-faking and driving the ball and trying to make plays," Ray said. "He normally is not a guy that does that, so the fact that he got into the paint area and did some good things."

Antonius Cleveland finished with 12 points, but did not have a field goal in the second half, and five rebounds.

Wallace had 10 points and nine assists with just two turnovers. Joel Angus III had nine rebounds.

The Redhawks will host Loyola Marymount in their home opener on Saturday. Tipoff is set for 2 p.m. at the Show Me Center.