CLEVELAND, Ga. - With every game crucial to the seeding in the approaching Appalachian Athletic Conference (AAC) Tournament, CIU men's basketball suffered a hard-to-swallow overtime time loss to Truett McConnell on Saturday. With the 80-77 defeat to the Bears (18-9, 14-8 AAC), the Rams fall to 15-11 on the year and 11-10 in the AAC.
CIU held an 11-point (30-19) lead on a Jaylon Jeter layup with 4:22 remaining in the first half. It would end up being their largest lead of the game as the Bears trimmed the advantage to 32-30 at halftime.
CIU trailed by as much as nine in the second half but found themselves down three (69-66) with three seconds left in regulation. Darrian Oates was fouled to prevent a 3-point sot opportunity with 0.5 on the game clock. Oates made the front end of double-bonus free throws and then missed the second. However, a clock error on the miss forced the officials to award possession of the ball to the team who held the possession arrow, and the Rams would get the ball back. Miraculously Skyler McKinney scored at the horn off a well-executed inbounds play to send the game into overtime (69-69). Unfortunately, CIU was outscored 11-8 in the final five minutes, falling 80-77.
Skyler McKinney scored 19 points and pulled down five rebounds while fellow junior Jalen Brinson tallied 18 on 2-of-5 shooting from beyond the arc. Brinson picked up five assists in the game to round out a solid evening.
Christian Howard and Darrian Oates each reached double figures as Howard scored ten and Oates record 13 points and six boards.
Bryce Causey led the Rams in rebounding with nine.
What Coach Tony Stockman is saying:
"Proud of how our guys played. We fought back, stayed with it, and kept fighting. Really played some excellent basketball today. We needed a few bounces to go our way at the end. As good as we performed, the little mistakes are so important, and we just made a few too many of those mistakes."
Up next:
CIU will take on Johnson University (Tenn.) on the road on Monday, Feb. 14 at 7:30 PM.
