Staff photo / Preston Byers Liberty’s Ramsey Hadi-Cox (5) attempts a layup over Southeast’s Lucas Hixon during the Leopards’ home loss on Tuesday.

LIBERTY — The first half of Tuesday’s Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference (MVAC) Grey Tier game against Southeast went well for Liberty, as the Leopards, buoyed by 10 Ramsey Hadi-Cox points, led the Pirates by four heading into the break.

However, the second half proved to be little like the first, and Liberty watched as its once-promising performance turned into a 50-36 home loss to Southeast.

“Like I told the team after the game and at halftime, we played a heck of a first half,” Liberty head coach Steve Arnold said. “We kind of switched some things up defensively. I think it frustrated them a little bit. But we didn’t maintain that in the second half of paying attention to detail with our defensive gameplan. They have too many good shooters to lose them, and you can’t give them two or three shots. They got a ton of offensive rebounds. That’s what we’ve done pretty much: not played four quarters of a basketball game.”

The Leopards and Pirates kept pace with one another through the opening period, with Devyn Miller and Hadi-Cox leading the way for their respective teams. But while Miller went scoreless in the second quarter, Hadi-Cox’s offensive output grew; he scored six of his team’s 10 points in the period as part of an 8-2 run, and Liberty took a 20-16 lead into halftime.

The second half began well enough for the Leopards, with Jimmod Moore and Maurice Fason scoring in the opening several minutes to keep Liberty ahead. A Southeast run soon followed, though, marking the beginning of the end for the Leopards.

Holding Liberty to one basket over the final five minutes of the third quarter, the Pirates, led by Cohen Richardson, who had a game-high 24 points for the night, closed the period on a 10-2 run, creating a five-point lead heading into the fourth.

Again, the Leopards managed to hold steady in the opening moments of the fourth quarter, but much like the third, Southeast pulled away. After a Moore basket 95 seconds into the fourth, the Pirates enjoyed a 10-1 run over the span of nearly five minutes in which the Southeast lead grew to 14.

The half-court offensive woes for the Leopards were only compounded by a rough night at the free-throw line; Liberty made just two of its dozen foul shots. Additionally, Hadi-Cox, who had a team-high 13 points, scored just three points in the second half and went 1-for-3 at the line.

“They denied him the basketball in the second half,” Arnold said of Hadi-Cox. “They kind of went into a little box-and-one. They played man-to-man, but they denied him the basketball and made someone else handle the ball. It wears you down, and Ramsey’s done a great job all year. He’s kind of playing out of position for us right now. … He’s giving us everything he has.”

The loss dropped Liberty to 2-14 on the season and 2-9 in MVAC Grey play. The Leopards, who snapped an eight-game losing streak last Thursday vs. Champion, are set for their second meeting of the season with Crestview on Friday in East Fairfield.

“It’s still a process. We’re still in the teaching process of what we’re doing,” Arnold said. “I have no complaints; they work hard, they play hard. We just got to get a better understanding of the game in general terms. Once we do that, we’ll take another step.”