By JOHN BOHNENKAMP

MACOMB, Ill. — Makai Kvamme was part of three Illinois state high school championship teams at DePaul Prep, so he’s used to winning.

What he’s going through in his first season at Western Illinois is something completely different.

The Leathernecks lost 78-74 to Southeast Missouri State on Thursday night at Western Hall. It was the 11th consecutive loss for Western Illinois (4-18 overall, 0-11 Ohio Valley Conference).

“It’s tough,” said Kvamme, “Losing 18 of 22 games, that’s hard.”

It’s the fifth-longest current losing streak in NCAA Division I play. And it can be especially frustrating to lose a game like this one, in which the Leathernecks can point to numerous opportunities when they could have taken control of the game.

“That’s a good team,” Western Illinois guard Lucas Lorenzen said of the Redhawks. “They’ve beaten some of the top teams in the conference, and they’re just a really talented team. And when you come this close to being them at home, yeah, you wish you’d get that one, especially when it’s a tight game the entire time. It was never a 20-point game, it was right there the whole time.”

“I’m not even that frustrated,” coach Chad Boudreau said. “I know we played the best we could. We just couldn’t get the win.”

Western Illinois tied the game twice in the last two minutes, but SEMO (12-10, 7-4) had an answer each time. Marqueas Bell’s layup with 1:30 to play gave the Redhawks a 72-70 lead, then after Western Illinois’ Danny Stephens tied the game with two free throws with 1:08 to go, SEMO’s Brendan Terry scored 13 seconds later to give the Redhawks their final lead.

A loss like this could be as simple as the nine free throws the Leathernecks missed, or the 40 points they allowed inside to the Redhawks.

“You look at the box score, we missed too many free throws as a team,” said Lorenzen, who led the Leathernecks with 20 points. “The second half, we scored 45 points. You do that every half, you’re going to win games if you get stops and take care of the ball, and we didn’t do that.”

“There has been a few games that we should have taken, like this one,” Kvamme said. “We’re just not finishing them. There’s probably about five wins we could have had if we had just made better decisions, played harder, made free throws or gotten stops.”

“We didn’t make free throws, we missed some layups,” Boudreau said. “And you can’t do that in games like this.”

Kvamme had a season-high 14 points, his first double-digit scoring game of the season.

“The coaches are telling me to be more aggressive,” Kvamme said. “They say I can get by people. I’ve just got to finish my layups. And so, yeah, they encouraged me to be more confident. That’s a big thing.”

The Leathernecks also got a career-high 14 points from Goanar Biliew.

“Makai had a good game, Goanar had a good game, and that’s what we need from those guys,” Boudreau said.

It was another defeat the Leathernecks were left to lament.

“This team could have easily quit a long time ago, but they’re still fighting,” Boudreau said.

Photo: Western Illinois’ Makai Kvamme (middle) is fouled going to the basket in Thursday’s game. (WIU Athletic Communications)