SATURDAY'S SCORES
@Southeast Missouri 75, SIUE 71
@Murray State 85, Morehead State 57
@Austin Peay 93, Eastern Kentucky 85
@UT Martin 80, Eastern Illinois 79 (OT)
@Belmont 101, Jacksonville State 84
@Tennessee State 70, Tennessee Tech 55
SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 75, SIUE 71
CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. - Skyler Hogan scored 17 points and Southeast Missouri (7-20, 3-11) fought off SIU Edwardsville (7-20, 4-10) down the stretch to grab a 75-71 victory Saturday at the Show Me Center.
SEMO won back-to-back games for the first time this season and has won three of its last four contests. All three of those wins were by no more than four points.
In a game that featured 11 ties and six lead changes, the Redhawks again stepped up in the final minute to secure victory.
Zeke Moore drained a 3-pointer to bring the game to its 11th tie at 69-69 with 1:17 remaining.
SEMO then scored six of the last eight points with four of those coming off free throws by Alex Caldwell to claim its seven win of the year. Caldwell calmly made two free throws with nine seconds after Mike Adewunmi made a jumper to get the Cougars within two.
The Redhawks won the first half, 40-36, and overcame a 9.3 percent (1-of-11) shooting slump in the first 12:20 of the second stanza.
SEMO still managed to build a 54-44 lead at the 12:22 mark before SIUE went on an 11-1 run to tie the game at 55-55 with 9:21 left to play. After that, neither team led by more than five the rest of the way.
Hogan shot 6-of-16 from the field, knocked down three 3-pointers and sunk 2-of-2 free throws en route to his third double-digit scoring performance in four games.
Caldwell followed with 15 points with nine of those coming at the free throw line. Quatarrius Wilson added 13 points and nine rebounds. Wilson, too, made nine free throws.
SEMO outscored SIUE, 21-14, at the free throw line in the second half. The Redhawks made 21-of-26 free throws for 80.8 percent in the final 20 minutes.
Moore led SIUE with 16 points.
MURRAY STATE 85, MOREHEAD STATE 57
MURRAY, Ky. - The Murray State Racers ran their home winning streak to 19 and kept a share of first place in the Ohio Valley Conference with an 85-57 victory over the Morehead State Eagles at the CFSB Center in Murray, Kentucky.
The win pushes the Racers (19-7) into the final two weeks (four games) of the OVC regular-season at 12-2. MSU is tied for first in the league with Austin Peay who defeated Eastern Kentucky 93-85. Murray State takes to the road next week for games at Eastern Illinois and SIUE (Feb. 20 & 22).
With a balanced attack of five players scoring in double-figures, the Racers never trailed. They received 15 points from Tevin Brown and 13 each from Jaiveon Eaves and KJ Williams. Chico Carter, Jr., and Devin Gilmore each tallied 11 points. Gilmore’s game-high 10 rebounds secured his second double-double this season.
Leading 19-12 at the 11:13 mark, the Racers displayed one of their greatest weapons, versatility. During the 12-1 run, four different MSU players scored as the lead went to 31-13 with 7:13 left before half. The Racers settled for a 13-point lead (45-32) at the half, after the Eagles hit a buzzer 3-pointer.
The Racers pushed to a 22-point lead on a 22-13 start to the second half and led 67-45 with 10:04 left. MSU ended the second half outscoring the Eagles 40-25.
Murray State limited their turnover total to 10 and it helped the Racers shoot 53 percent for the game (29-of-55). Defensively, MSU held Morehead State to 34 percent from the field (20-of-59) and the Racers won the rebound battle 41-33. The Racers outscored the Eagles 40-24 in the paint.
AUSTIN PEAY 93, EASTERN KENTUCKY 85
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. - If they awarded the win via style points, it might have gone a different way. Fortunately for Austin Peay State University men's basketball team, the score columns are all that matter at the end of the day and in that, the Govs outlasted Eastern Kentucky in a 93-85 contest, Saturday, to remain atop the Ohio Valley Conference.
Despite a second half that saw Eastern Kentucky hit 61 percent from the floor, the Govs parlayed a decided edge on the glass into their season's 18th win, while the Colonels dropped back below .500 at 13-14 overall (10-4 in the OVC).
Austin Peay's advantage on the glass was apparent early. On one sequence, Austin Peay snared three straight offensive rebounds to keep possession and assert its dominance. However, that belies a problem—the Govs were not particularly adroit from the floor for a large swath of the half, making second and third chances necessary. After hitting their first five attempts from the field, Austin Peay hit just one of its next eight, enabling the Colonels to hang around despite their own foibles from the floor.
As the Austin Peay offense got on track, the advantages Austin Peay enjoyed on the interior became magnified. Offensively, the Govs were getting multiple shots many possessions and on defense, forget it—if the Colonels missed, Austin Peay was getting the ball and heading the other way. And with Terry Taylor patrolling the interior—all of his career-high tying four swats came in the first half—the Colonels were missing often, hitting just 38.7 percent in the first half.
Add up the defense and rebounding, sprinkle in some Jordyn Adams buckets and you get a comfortable 46-32 Austin Peay lead at halftime, even factoring in some first-half struggles from three (2-for-13) and at the free-throw line (10-for-18).
Whatever Eastern Kentucky head coach A.W. Hamilton said in the locker room lit a fire under the Colonels, who opened the second half on a 10-2 run to cut the Austin Peay lead to six. The Governors retained their advantage on the glass, but that didn't mean the Colonels were going to go away quietly.
Austin Peay brought the lead back into double digits, but with Taylor off the floor after taking a blow that opened a small cut above his eye the Colonels cut the deficit to four after an 8-0 run featuring a heavy dose of Jomaru Brown.
That's when Alec Woodard decided to hit two of the bigger shots in his young career. With the Colonels on a tear, Woodard found space on the right wing and fired, finding his mark; on the next Austin Peay possession, Adams corralled an offensive rebound and found Woodard wide open in the exact same spot, with the exact same result. Nine-point lead for the Govs with eight minutes to play.
Over the final eight minutes, every time Austin Peay got a lead that could be termed 'comfortable' Eastern Kentucky would answer. Timely threes, forays to the bucket that led to points or fouls, the Colonels simply would not go away.
In the end, the Govs outlasted their foe. Around the four minute mark, a Ty Taylor miss led to an Abaev bucket, and then a Tre King offensive foul turned into an Adams layup. That brought the lead back to 10 points; although the Colonels would cut it back to four with 1:15 to play, they would never get closer as the Govs closed the contest hitting 7-of-8 at the line over the final 2:45 to close it out. Adams finished with a game-high 23 points, while Taylor (19 points, 13 rebounds) and Abaev (19 points, 12 rebounds) each had a double-double for the third time this season.
UT MARTIN 80, EASTERN ILLINOIS 79 (OT)
MARTIN, Tenn. - Senior guard Derek Hawthorne, Jr. swished a pull-up 25-foot three-point jumper just before the final buzzer to lift the University of Tennessee at Martin men’s basketball team to an 80-79 overtime victory over Eastern Illinois.
It was a wild finish at the Kathleen and Tom Elam Center as the Skyhawks forced an extra period after being down six points with three minutes to go in regulation. UT Martin also found itself down four points with 1:20 remaining in overtime before Hawthorne’s game-winner helped the Skyhawks improve to 8-17 (4-10 Ohio Valley Conference).
Quintin Dove piled up 32 points and 10 rebounds for the ninth double-double of his two-year UT Martin career. Hawthorne added 18 points, nine rebounds and five assists while Eman Sertovic knocked down four treys on his way to a career-high 14 points, logging the full 45 minutes. Ja’Darius Harris added a career-best six assists and also made a big three-pointer in overtime before Hawthorne’s heroics.
Eastern Illinois (12-14, 5-9 OVC) was led by Josiah Wallace’s 20 points while Mack Smith posted 19 points. Jordan Skipper-Brown (14 points, 13 rebounds) and George Dixon (12 points, 10 rebounds) hauled in double-doubles for the Panthers, who were held to 25 percent (6-of-24) from three-point range.
UT Martin scored six of the first eight points of the game before a trifecta from Hawthorne extended the Skyhawk lead out to 17-8 with 12:14 to go in the first half. Eastern Illinois took its first advantage of the contest at the 4:19 mark but UT Martin registered 10 of the final 14 points before the halftime break, accounting for a 35-31 lead at the intermission.
Dove was the only player on either side to crack double figures in the scoring column in the opening 20 minutes, tallying 19 points on 8-of-11 shooting. The Skyhawks sank 53.8 percent (14-of-26) of their field goal attempts while the Panthers made just one of its nine 3-point tries (9.1 percent) in the first half.
Hawthorne scored UT Martin’s first five points of the second half as the Skyhawks climbed on top by a 40-33 margin. After a Sertovic three-pointer – the first of three treys from the freshman over a 3:45 – kept UT Martin ahead, Eastern Illinois went on a 10-0 run to go ahead 59-50 with nine minutes remaining in regulation. Dove swished three-pointers on back-to-back possessions to knot the score with two minutes to go in the second half, adding a swooping layup with 33 seconds remaining to send the contest into overtime.
The Panthers led 76-72 at the 2:25 mark in overtime but Harris buried a clutch three-pointer from the right corner to slice the Skyhawk deficit to one. An empty Eastern Illinois possession and two free throws from Hawthorne resulted in a one-point UT Martin lead until Smith made a three-pointer to briefly give the Panthers a 79-77 advantage with 17 seconds remaining. Following a missed Skyhawk jumper and an off-target free throw from Eastern Illinois, Hawthorne received a pass from Jordan Pierce and just beat the buzzer to send the Elam Center crowd into a frenzy.
BELMONT 101, JACKSONVILLE STATE 84
NASHVILLE - Behind 26 points from sophomore Adam Kunkel (Hebron, Ky.), Belmont University men's basketball defeated Jacksonville State, 101-84, Saturday from the Curb Event Center.
Kunkel went 10-for-18 from the field and added four assists and four rebounds in the victory.
With sophomore point guard Grayson Murphy (Franklin, Tenn.) in early foul trouble, Belmont got a huge lift off the bench from junior Nick Hopkins (Fayetteville, Tenn.) who scored 12 points in 15 minutes.
After Jacksonville State trimmed a 15-point deficit to three points late in the first half, Kunkel capped a 7-0 run with a fadeaway 3-pointer to give Belmont a 48-38 halftime lead.
Jacksonville State got as close as 61-52 with 15:24 remaining, but four Kunkel points and a Murphy layin pushed the margin back to 15.
Belmont (20-7, 11-3 OVC) shot 56 percent (36-for-64) from the field and made nine 3-point field goals. The Bruins, the nation's leader in assists, handed out 23 assists on 36 made field goals.
Sophomore Nick Muszynski added 18 points, 12 rebounds, five assists and two blocked shots.
Murphy had 12 points, five rebounds, six assists and three steals.
De'Torrion Ware led Jacksonville State (10-17, 5-9 OVC) with 25 points.
Belmont University held a pregame ceremony to name the Curb Event Center playing surface Rick Byrd Court, in honor of the former head coach who won 805 career games and led Belmont to eight NCAA Tournament appearances.
TENNESSEE STATE 70, TENNESSEE TECH 55
NASHVILLE - Recap coming soon.