Half-court shot sinks UTM’s chances of OVC Tournament

Southeast Missouri State’s Antonius Cleveland sent Redhawk fans home happy after he hit a half-court buzzer-beater to defeat the UTM and ended their chances of going to the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.

The game started with the Skyhawks (8-21, 3-11 OVC) and the Redhawks (15-13, 6-8 OVC) swapping the lead a couple of times.  It wasn’t until the 13:45 mark when SEMO started to pull away from UTM by going on an 11-0 run.  The Skyhawks would answer with a 7-0 run halfway through the first half to close the lead back down to five.  For the rest of the first half, neither team went on any run as both teams swapped buckets until halftime.  The Redhawks took a seven-point lead into the locker room for halftime as they led the Skyhawks 35-28.

The second half started with UTM jumping out to a 11-3 run giving them the first lead since early in the first half.  The Skyhawks shot well from out side the arch as they hit four 3-pointers to jump out to a 42-39 lead with 16:21 left to go in the game.

At the eight minute mark, the Redhawks started to slowly fight back.  SEMO hit their first 3-pointer of the game just after the five minute mark; before then, the Redhawks were 0-12 from outside the arc.

The Redhawks continued to fight back until the 2:45 mark when they tied the game and took the lead off of a couple of free-throws.  With 15 seconds left to go in the game, both teams were tied at 72 with SEMO’s Jarekious Bradley stepping to the line to shoot two free throws.  Bradley hit both free throws and gave SEMO a two point advantage.

The next play, UTM’s Dee Oldham got fouled and made both of his free-throws tying the game with four seconds left.  SEMO inbounded the ball to Antonius Cleveland who drove down the court and put up a prayer from near half-court. The ball banked off the backboard and went in with 0.2 seconds left to go in the game.

UTM’s inbound pass was intercepted and the final buzzer sounded.

UTM’s leading scorers were Terence Smith, who totaled 23 points and shot 8-10 from the field and 5-7 from the 3-point line and Dee Oldham with 19 points.

SEMO’s leading scorers were Jarekious Bradley who had 22 points and Antonius Cleveland with 14 points.

SEMO ended the game shooting 48 percent from the field and only 19 percent (3-16) from the 3-point line.  The Redhawks scored a majority of their points in the paint with 40 points and also scored 13 second chance points and had 36 points come from their bench.

UTM finished the night shooting 49 percent from the field and 39 percent from the 3-point line.  The Skyhawks scored 26 points in the paint and 25 off of the bench.  Rebounding was a big difference for the Skyhawks as they gave up 27 defensive rebounds and only snatched 4 offensive rebounds for the entire game.  The Skyhawks also gave up 24 points from the free throw line.

The loss for UTM knocks them out of contention for a seed in the OVC tournament and drops them to 8-21 and 3-11 in conference play.  The Skyhawks will end their season with two home games on Feb. 27 when they face the Murray State Racers, and Mar. 1 when they host the Austin Peay Governors.