Storm Men Down UAM to Win Home Finale

DURANT, Okla. – Southeastern shot nearly 60 percent in the second half and drained nine threes over that span to power a come-from-behind 79-72 win over Arkansas-Monticello in Saturday's home finale in Bloomer Sullivan Arena.
 
The win is the team's sixth-straight and improves the Savage Storm to 18-6 overall on the season and 14-6 in Great American Conference play. Couples with a Saturday loss by Southern Arkansas, Southeastern now holds second place in the league's standings all alone with two games to play.
 
"It's always good to win your last game in front of the home crowd," said head coach Kelly Green. "We had a good turnout and a very boisterous crowd.  We didn't give them a whole lot to cheer about in the first half but when things got going a little bit our guys fed off the crowd and the crowd fed off our guys play."
 
"They did a great job of forcing us out," continued Green, "And our timing was a little off on some open shots because they did a good job of pushing up into us. We were dribbling the ball a little too much and our offensive stuff just wasn't going downhill much. We talked to the guys and said we have to start going downhill more. Once we started doing that we were getting open looks and the guys were pinging the ball around the perimeter and we're too good of shooters to miss wide open shots from the perimeter."
 
They did not miss many in the second half as the Storm went 9-of-19 from beyond the arc over the final 20 minutes and shot 58.6 percent overall from the floor.
 
Kellen Manek was the game's leading scorer as he finished with 21 points on 6-of-11 shooting with three threes and wrapped up the double-double with 11 rebounds to lead all players on the glass as well.
 
Kevin Buckingham was right behind on both accounts, turning in his GAC-best 11^th double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds.
 
Jett Jobe connected on a trio of threes to finish with 12 while Adam Dworsky turned in 11 to round out the players in double-figures.
 
Jobe and Dworsky each nearly had double-doubles as well, with Jobe handing out nine assists on the afternoon, while Dworsky was right behind with eight. Jobe, who was already second on SE's all-time assists list, became just the second player at Southeastern to surpass 400 career assists.
 
SE opened with the first seven points of the game with five of them coming from Zatezic, but UAM answered with an 8-0 run to take an 8-7 lead at the 14:52 mark.
 
Back-to-back buckets would give the Storm the lead before the Boll Weevils swiped it back with a 7-0 run to go up 15-11 with 10:00 to play in the half.
 
Buckets from Buckingham and Myles Nesbitt would tie the game at 15-15, but an 8-3 run by UAM would again put them in front by five points.
 
The Storm would trail by as many as nine over the final five minutes before closing the gap to 32-25 at halftime.
 
Despite a couple early pushes in the second half the Storm still trailed 42-34 with 13:21 to play, but a Manek layup followed by threes from Jobe and Manek would quickly knot the game at 42-42 with 11:45 to play.
 
Those were the first eight points of a 15-0 run capped by a Manek four-point play that pushed SE in front 49-42 at the 10:40 mark.
 
UAM closed the lead back to three points on its next two possessions, but a Jobe three followed by a Buckingham bucket on the next possession made the score 54-46 with 7:38 to play.
 
The Weevils would close the gap to six points as late as 2:00 to play, but a Dworsky three would end that threat and SE would go 5-of-6 at the free throw line in the final minute and Buckingham would punctuate the win with an alley-oop dunk on a pass from Manek with 15 seconds to play and hitting the and-one free throw to propel  the Storm to a 79-72 win.