Senior guard Derek Hawthorne, Jr. swished a pull-up 25-foot three-point jumper just before the final buzzer to lift the UTM 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. UTM 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 UTM 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.
“I’m really excited for my guys,” Skyhawk head coach Anthony Stewart said. “They were deserving of a win. We had a letdown game that was in our grasp (at Southeast Missouri) on Thursday but these guys stepped up for each other. Hawthorne and Dove were huge down the stretch – that’s what seniors do and that’s the leadership that we anticipate from them. When things looked bleak, we got tougher and just kept coming.”
UTM 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 UTM 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 UTM’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 UTM 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 UTM 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.
UTM plays its final two road games of the season next week, heading to OVC rivals Tennessee Tech (Thursday, Feb. 20) and Jacksonville State (Saturday, Feb. 22).
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