SE Athletics
Matt Thomas, Sports Information Director
SHAWNEE, Okla. – Southeastern struggled on the glass and from beyond the arc on Thursday, suffering a 73-59 loss at Oklahoma Baptist in a battle of Great American Conference Western Division preseason favorites in Shawnee, Okla.
The loss drops the Savage Storm to 0-1 to start the year overall and in GAC Western Division play heading into a Saturday afternoon contest against Southwestern Oklahoma State at 4 p.m. in Weatherford, Okla.
“We got a lot of new faces,” said head coach Kelly GreenWere still trying to figure out who we are right now. We’re turning the ball over a lot right now. Really more than anything I thought our defensive intensity was really poor.”
“Our shot selection was poor,” Green continued, “Because we weren’t ready to shoot the ball when we had an open shot. I thought in the first half we were not spread out enough around the floor and they were able to rotate on us very easily. It’s the first of 20 scheduled and I guess we’ll be back up here in a couple weeks and it’s not going to get any easier for us. There were some bright spots.”
Kellen Manek finished with a team-high 14 points on 5-of-9 shooting while hauling in a team-best seven rebounds.
Bobby Johnson was next in line with 12 points on 50 percent shooting performance, while RJ Weeks finished the game with 11 points in his first game.
Adam Dworsky finished with eight points and dished out four assists.
As a team, the Storm shot 42.6 percent overall from the floor, but struggled from long range, hitting 25.0 percent from long range while also hitting 50.0 percent from the free throw line.
In his first career start, Weeks put up eight first-half points, hitting 2-of-3 from three-point range, while SE shot 48.0 percent overall from the floor, but struggled from long range and at the free throw line, hitting 27.3 and 44.4 percent, respectively.
On the boards, the Bison held a 36-to-26 edge in rebounding, including pulling down 12 offensive boards and outscoring the Storm 10-0 in second-chance points.
Weeks scored the team’s first points of the season, draining a three to take a 3-2 lead early, with SE slowly edging its lead out to 16-8 by the 12:08 mark when a Kellen Manek three fell.
OBU would close the gap, but the Storm would hold off the charge until the eight minute mark when the Bison put together a 17-10 run to take a 34-28 lead with 1:10 to go in the half.
Vadim Clanet would cut that deficit in half with four seconds to play on a three-point play to make the score 34-31 at halftime.
The Storm got off to a slow start to the second half as OBU used a 12-2 run over the first 4:20 of the half to take a 46-33 lead with 15:40 to play.
The teams would trade buckets over the next few possessions before Southeastern finally got its run, reeling off a 10-3 charge to cut the deficit to 60-55 after a Weeks three with 5:35 to play.
That was as close as it would get though as the Bison scored the next six points on its way to a 13-4 run over the final five minutes to hand SE the 73-59 loss.