Fort Myers Tip-Off: Bowling Green, Southern Utah advance to Palm Division title game

There was nothing free about Southern Utah's win over Yale in the day's first Rocket Mortgage Fort Myers Tip-Off Palm Division game.

Thunderbirds redshirt senior John Knight III was fouled shooting a 3-pointer with .08 seconds left in overtime and the game tied at 85. The redshirt senior buried all three free throws to end a three-game losing streak for Southern Utah (2-3) and advance his team to the Palm Division championship game with an 88-85 overtime win.

The Thunderbirds will play Bowling Green at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Suncoast Arena for the title.

"We've been through a lot of these," Southern Utah coach Todd Simon said. "For some reason we are attracted to overtime games so we've kind of been in these shoes a little bit."

"I started off a little slow and picked up two early fouls," Knight said. "Give hats off to our team we always have the next man mentality and they stepped up big time. I sat out most of the first half and the energy did not drop."

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Tevian Jones led the Thunderbirds in scoring with 24 points while Knight III scored 10 of his 19 points in overtime.

After trailing 67-60 with three minutes left, Southern Utah stormed back and tied the game thanks to Maizen Fausett. Just like Knight in overtime, he was fouled while attempting a 3-pointer with 13 seconds left and sank all three shots to tie the game at 73-all.

The overtime period would see the Thunderbirds fall behind 82-77 with under 2 minutes left. Knight would hit two free throws and Fausett would bury a 3 with :46 left to tie the game at 82.

Yale's Azar Swain hit 1-of-2 free throws to put the Bulldogs back up one, but Knight hit a layup and converted the free throw for a three-point play and an 85-83 lead with 13 seconds left. Yale's Isaiah Kelly hit two free throws with :02 on the clock to what looked like send the game to double overtime, but Knight made sure that didn't happen.

Swain would lead all Yale (3-3) scorers with 21 points followed by Isaiah Kelly (14), Eze Dike (12) and Matthue Cotton (12).

"Felt like we gave that game away four or five different times," Yale coach James Jones said. "Hats off to Southern Utah, they did a great job they fought to the very end but we were in position several times to come away with a victory and we did not so we are certainly disappointed."

Bowling Green 82, Milwaukee 68

After a back-and-forth first half, Bowling Green used a huge second half to secure its spot in the Palm Division championship.

Daeqwon Plowden tied a career-high with 26 points while shooting 67% from the field as the Falcons (2-3) took down the Panthers (1-3).

“I challenged Daeqwon,” Bowling Green coach Michael Huger said. “I guess a day ago and I reminded him of that challenge I said ‘I need you to go back to being the toughest dude on the court, the roughest toughest dude on the court. I need that Daeqwon can you bring that to me? And he said yes sir.’ And he delivered so hats go to him.”

Milwaukee took the early lead in the second half 39-37 thanks to a Patrick Baldwin 3-pointer but hopes of a second-half rally took a blow after the 6-foot-9 forward went down with an apparent ankle injury that he suffered late in the first half.

“For us, it wasn’t good when you have your leading scorer and someone that could help Dre (Deandre Gholston) out today,” Milwaukee coach Patrick Baldwin said.

Gholston led all Panthers with 19 points, the only player in double-digits for his team.

Bowling Green would go on a 16-2 run over the next 10 minutes to give the Falcons the largest lead of the night.

“I feel like our defensive intensity was on another level,” Plowden said. “We came out understanding that we needed to get stops, we needed to stop the drive, and we needed to clean up the boards. I felt like that was at a high level and on top of us getting stops and cleaning up the glass the energy just flowed right into our offense.”

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Bowling Green beat Milwaukee while Southern Utah rallies by Yale in Fort Myers