ARKADELPHIA, Ark. — Henderson State shot 52.3% from the floor on Saturday and never trailed in an 84-73 win over first-place Southeastern Oklahoma State.

The win was the fourth in a row for the Reddies and improved them to 11-5 on the year and 7-3 in the Great American Conference standings. They are now tied with Southeastern for second place in the league.

HSU had a tremendous game offensively and was led by Tomislav Miholjcic, who had a career-high 16 points on 8-of-13 shooting. Miholjcic is the first player this season to lead Henderson in scoring in back-to-back games. Yuri Swinford and Malik Riddle also finished in double figures with each pouring in 13 points. All 13 of Riddle's points came in the second half.

It was a dream start for Henderson, who hit five of its first seven shots and got out to a 12-3 lead at the under-16 minute media timeout. Southeastern closed the gap to 21-19 at the 9:43 mark behind a 16-9 run, but a 3-pointer from Franck Kamgain and two buckets from Miholjcic fueled an 11-4 response from the Reddies and pushed the lead back out to 32-23 with 3:39 to go until the break.

Already up nine, HSU added to its momentum in the final seconds of the half. After Swinford made a driving layup to put Henderson in front 40-31 with five seconds left, Damian Dear stole the ensuing inbounds pass and drilled a 3-pointer as time expired to give the Reddies a 43-31 advantage after 20 minutes. HSU shot 53% in the period and limited SOSU to 3-for-16 shooting from beyond the arc.

Southeastern scored the first two buckets of the second half to trim its deficit down to seven, but Henderson was able to keep them at arm's length over the first eight minutes of play. A 3-pointer from SOSU's Bobby Johnson with 12:19 remaining helped the Savage Storm get within 53-47 — the closest it had been since the first half — but the Reddies had an answer.

Henderson responded with seven points from Riddle, the last of which was a thunderous dunk, and 3-pointers from Ryan Boyce and Alvin Miles over the next three minutes to power a 15-4 run and seize its largest lead of the day, 68-51, with 8:40 left.

Down by 17 points, Southeastern Oklahoma rallied for one last run. The Savage Storm, who boasted the league's top scoring offense entering the game, knocked down five 3-pointers over the next five minutes and used an 18-8 spurt to close the gap to 76-69 at the 3:21 mark.

As was the case during the run and all game long, Henderson had a counter to the Southeastern punch. After seeing its lead whittled down to seven, the Reddies scored the next six points — four on free throws from Quawn Marshall and Xavier Davenport and two on a bucket from Riddle — to reestablish an 82-69 lead with 1:19 to go. The final run iced the game for HSU, who ran out the clock on one of its biggest wins of the season.

The Reddies were terrific defensively and limited Southeastern's top ranked offense to just 73 points — its second-lowest point total of the year. SOSU shot just 42% from the field and was 11-of-39 (28%) behind the arc. Henderson out-rebounded the Savage Storm 40-31 and its deep bench outscored Southeastern 37-7.

HSU returns to action on Monday at 6 p.m. when it hosts Southern Nazarene at the Duke Wells Center.