Here’s what we learned from Tulane basketball’s win over Southern Miss

It was too little too late for the Southern Miss men’s basketball team against Tulane.

The Golden Eagles used a late burst to cut a 13-point deficit to three in the final minute of play, but were unable to get over the top as the Green Wave held on to defeat USM 61-56 in front of an announced crowd of 3,668 Wednesday night at Green Coliseum.

Southern Miss dropped to 2-7 overall, while Tulane improved to 7-1.

“I was pleased with the way we finished,” said Golden Eagle head coach Jay Ladner. “Maybe if the game had gone on another minute, minute-and-a-half, maybe we could have been able to come back.”

Until the last four minutes of the game, Southern Miss had a difficult time getting anything going consistently inside against a fierce matchup zone defense employed by the Green Wave.

“They played pretty good defense, but I still feel like we could have gotten it inside, played inside-out better,” said Golden Eagle sophomore Tyler Stevenson, who had a team-high 10 points and 9 rebounds.

“That was the game plan coming in. We have to keep moving the ball better, keep the cutters moving in and spreading the floor. We just have to keep working hard in practice and get better.”

Six of Stevenson’s points came in the final four minutes, when the Golden Eagles went on a 14-4 run to make it close at the end.

Until then, the Green Wave enjoyed an advantage, but the Southern Miss defense kept Tulane within striking distance, especially in the second half.

“We had a good defensive game, one of the best we’ve played all season,” said Ladner. “We were able to get some turnovers (19 for the game), but then we didn’t do anything with them.”

After playing back-and-forth with the lead in the first 11 minutes of play, Tulane went on a 9-0 run to take the lead for good, capping the surge with a fast-break layup by Jordan Walker, giving the Wave a 26-17 lead with 5:09 to play in the first half.

USM sophomore Gabe Watson got a jump shot, a defensive rebound and a fast break layup to reel the Green Wave in, and the margin was 30-24 at halftime.

Tulane quickly built a nine-point margin on a 3-point shot by Christion Thompson, who led the Green Wave with 15 points and 9 rebounds.

But Tulane was never able to pull away, and USM got a spark off its bench, including 8 points from freshman guard Angel Smith.

“I tried to bring some energy to the floor,” said Smith. “I’ve been working hard, waiting for a chance, then to come in and play hard for however long I’m out there.”

It looked like Tulane was finally about to pull away for good, when K.J. Lawson, a senior transfer from Kansas, hit jump shots on consecutive possessions to give the Green Wave a 53-40 lead with 4:49 to play.

But Stevenson took a feed from Leonard Harper-Baker for a layup, then Harper-Baker got a layup of his own off a pass from junior David McCoy, before freshman Auston Leslie swished back-to-back 3-pointers to make it 56-52.

With 16 seconds to play, Stevenson got a putback dunk off a missed 3-point shot to pull USM to 57-54, but the Green Wave converted four foul shots in the final seconds to keep Southern Miss at bay.

“Sometimes I think we too long to get started,” said Stevenson. “We need to come out at the start with that same mindset that we had at the end.”

Watson finished with 9 points for Southern Miss. Teshaun Hightower added 13 points and 10 rebounds for Tulane.

USM forward Boban Jacdonmi sat out Wednesday’s game after suffering a high-ankle sprain in USM’s loss to Alabama last week in the Bahamas. The 6-foot-9 senior, who is averaging 12.4 points and 6.4 rebounds a game, is considered day-to-day entering Saturday’s 2 p.m. home game against Southern Illinois.

This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 11:01 PM.