SIUE breaks away in second half to down Miners

Yamani Ball

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. – Points were hard to come by for the Miners Thursday night against the Great Lakes Valley Conference’s leader in scoring defense and UMR’s missed opportunity to extend a lead in the second half ended up costing it a chance at a victory.

The Miners were able to keep Southern Illinois Edwardsville scoreless for nearly six minutes to start the second half but couldn’t push a narrow lead out, allowing the Cougars a chance to regroup and pull away for a 72-58 victory over UMR at the Vadalabene Center.

Trailing by three at the half, UMR got its first – and only – lead of the night 2:30 into the second half when Yamani Ball drained a three-pointer on the fast break to give the Miners a 36-34 lead. But despite the strong defensive effort by UMR in the early minutes of the second half, it was unable to extend the lead.

The Miners held the Cougars scoreless until the 14:12 mark of the second half when J.B. Jones got the lead back for SIUE with a three-point basket. Jones hit another three just over a minute later as part of a 16-1 Cougar run that gave SIUE a 50-37 lead with 10 minutes remaining.

UMR scored the next four points to draw to within nine, but a nine-point spurt by the Cougars that followed extended the SIUE lead to 18 at 59-41 with just over six minutes to go.

SIUE jumped out to a 10-2 lead four minutes into the contest, but the Miners were able to hang around for much of the first half. UMR closed to within three at the 14:13 mark on a three-pointer by Joe Shardo, but SIUE rebuilt its lead to 13 over the next three minutes.

The Miners, however, closed the gap to four on a couple of occasions in the final four minutes of the half and moved to within three on Justin Taylor’s put-back just before the end of the half. The Cougars led 34-31 at halftime.

UMR shot just 36.5 percent in the game and got 20 points from Ball and 15 from Shardo. The Miners were also victimized by 23 turnovers, which the Cougars turned into 27 points.

SIUE (14-12, 9-9 GLVC) was led by Anthony Jones with 16 points.

The Miners (7-19, 2-16 GLVC) will conclude the 2006-07 season Saturday with a 6:15 p.m. game at Quincy University.