The losing ended for Southwest Mississippi Community College on Thursday night.
Since both basketball teams beat Hinds Community College the last week in January, the Bears hadn’t been able to manage a win.
But a near-perfect night from the free throw line by the women earned a 63-54 win over Pearl River, while the men needed overtime to take an 84-78 victory.
The women’s win thrusts them back into the South Division race in a three-way tie for third. Only the top four make the playoffs with three games remaining in the regular season.
“It seemed like 10 games in a row and it was really two,” Southwest women’s head coach Mark Swindle said.
The Lady Bears returned to their balanced scoring attack, with almost five players in double figures.
Erin Brabham led the team with 16 points, Phenicia Taylor scored 14, Whitley Wiltz put in 12 and Kimberly Griffin scored 10. Hope Swindle finished with nine.
“We had to have this win,” Mark Swindle said. “There was no other choice for us to get back in the hunt.
“It was a team effort again and that’s how we’re good.”
Wiltz and Griffin cleaned up the boards as Wiltz finished with 13 rebounds and Griffin grabbed 12.
Southwest didn’t shoot well from the field and was 0-for-11 from 3-point range until Taylor hit a 3-pointer with six minutes left to extend the lead to 10. Swindle added the second trey on the next possession before the Bears finished off the game from the line.
The Bears were perfect from the line in the first half making all 12 shots. In the second half, the same trend continued through the single bonus. Southwest made every foul shot.
With 13 seconds left and an eight-point lead the perfect night came crashing down as Taylor’s final free throw rimmed out off the left side to put the Bears at 23-of-24 for the night.
“You notice if you’re missing,” Swindle said. “We’ve been shooting a lot in practice, but we always shoot a lot everyday.”
A near non-existent Terencio Powell played through the first half watching the Bears trail by six at half.
After the break, Powell caught up with what he had missed.
He scored 10 points in the first five minutes of the second half, including two 3-pointers. His 10th point gave the Bears a lead for the first time since the opening minutes.
From then on, it was up to the Southwest guards and Pearl River’s Donta Smith to toggle the lead back and forth during regulation.
Powell, who finished with 23 points, Aubrey Coleman, who scored 24, Philip Brown, who tallied 12 and Otis Smith with his 13 points were able to make whichever shot or pass the Bears needed.
Smith found Powell for an alley-oop with seven minutes left to tie the game at 49. Philip Brown tied the game at 63 with three minutes left on a jumper that fell.
Coleman found Brown to tie the game at 67 with 57 seconds on the clock. The game almost got away with 30 seconds left as Jovan Sims missed his second free throw, but it went out of bounds off Southwest.
Sims was fouled again and made both free throws to push the lead to three with 23 seconds left.
On his way off a handoff screen, Powell found himself an open shot at the tie.
“Coach had called the play in the timeout,” Powell said. “I came through the screen and saw I had space, so I stopped and made the 3.”
The shot went down with 15 seconds remaining, but Pearl River’s Jeremy Stewart was forced to the corner by Coleman and Brown. Brown tipped the ball out of Stewart’s hands to keep the Wildcats from a shot at a game-winner.
The momentum kept going into overtime. Coleman scored the first six points, including a shot-clock beating jumper and dunk off a steal in the open floor.
Brown started to find lanes to drive instead of just having to hit pull-up jumpers, and Powell had two trips to the line late to keep the six-point advantage intact.
“Perseverance is a good word for tonight,” Southwest head coach Bill Wallace said. “We could’ve shut it down if we’d wanted to.”
The Bears trailed by 11 in the first half, but Powell’s spark to start the second half kept the Bears alive long enough to get their guards going.
“That’s what we need,” Wallace said. “We’ve got to have good guard play.”
