Southern Miss’ run through Pensacola finally ran out of gas Sunday night, when top-seeded Troy beat the Golden Eagles 78-70 in the Sun Belt semifinals at the Pensacola Bay Center. It was the kind of loss the league’s unforgiving tournament format is built to produce: as the No. 8 seed, Southern Miss had to win on four straight days just to claim the title, and Jay Ladner’s club nearly pulled it off after beating James Madison on Thursday, Texas State on Friday and App State on Saturday. That made it three wins in three days before running into a rested Troy team that had advanced directly to the semifinals. Southern Miss finished its season 19-16, but also finished 5-1 at the Pensacola Bay Center this year after winning the Pensacola Invitational there in November.
There was some real foresight in that November trip. When Southern Miss accepted the Pensacola Invitational, Ladner said it “allows us to once again play inside the Pensacola Bay Center ahead of the Sun Belt Tournament in March,” and the Golden Eagles clearly looked comfortable in the building, winning the event by beating North Florida and then UT Martin for the title. In the tournament proper, Tylik Weeks turned in one of the best four-game stretches in school postseason history, scoring 106 total points—31 against James Madison, 32 against Texas State, 28 against App State and 15 against Troy—to set a program record for points in a conference tournament. Isaac Taveras added 68 points across the four games and saved his best for last with a career-high 32 in the semifinal, while Djahi Binet scored 44 points in the run and closed his college career with 14 points and seven rebounds against Troy.
Sunday’s semifinal turned on Troy’s efficiency and foul-line edge. Jerrell Bellamy led the Trojans with 22 points and six blocks, Cooper Campbell scored 14, Victor Valdes had 13 and Thomas Dowd added 12, while Troy shot 31-for-38 at the line and led for more than 36 minutes. Southern Miss got 32 from Taveras, 15 from Weeks and 14 from Binet, and actually won the paint points 48-38 and second-chance points 21-11, but the Golden Eagles went just 2-for-19 from three and 12-for-20 at the stripe. Now the baton passes to Georgia Southern, whose improbable Cinderella run reached five games in five nights after wins over Old Dominion, Arkansas State, South Alabama and Marshall; that streak carries the No. 10 seed into tonight’s championship game against No. 1 Troy in Pensacola.
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