Box Score The Spring Hill College (SHC) men's basketball team opened the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) portion of their schedule with a thrilling 99-90 overtime victory over the Paine College (PC) Lions on Monday night at the Arthur R. Outlaw Recreation Center.
 
The Lions (1-9, 0-4 SIAC East) held a 44-39 advantage at the half, but SHC rallied to take a 51-47 lead five minutes into the second period off a layup by forward William Loyd that was followed by a 3-pointer by junior guard Jack Morrissey. From there, the Badgers maintained a 5- to 7-point advantage for the next nine minutes of play, but Paine rallied to take a 64-62 lead with six minutes to play off a Kaderious Compton 3-point bucket.
 
Paine and Spring Hill then traded bucket-for-bucket over the last five minutes of regulation time as the Badgers would tie the game four times down the stretch with the final instance coming when sophomore forward Brandon Fischer drained two free throws with one minute showing on the clock to knot the score at 73-73.
 
In the overtime period, Loyd scored off the opening tip when junior Walter Massey found him with the jump ball and the freshman out-raced the defense to the hoop. Morrissey knocked down another 3-pointer 20 seconds later to make it a 78-73 Badger lead and then completed another long-range jumper at 2:52 to stake SHC to an 83-75 cushion. Sophomore Jared Holland drained 7-of-9 free throw attempts in the final two minutes as Fischer completed all four of his charity stripe visits and Loyd put the finishes touches on the night with a breakaway dunk following a perfectly thrown lead pass by Fischer with just 14 seconds left in the game.
 
All five Badger starters reached double-digits in scoring as Fischer led the charge with 26 points, Massey dropped in 21 points, Loyd contributed 13 points, Morrissey had 12 points off four 3-point buckets, and Holland put 11 points through the hoops including his nine free throws. As a team, SHC shot 51.6% (33-64) on the night including 35.3% (6-17) from 3-point range. The Badgers made 73% (27-37) of their free throws and controlled the boards by a 50-28 margin in rebounding with Massey hauling in a game-high 11 ricochets. Turnovers still continue to haunt Spring Hill as the home team lost 18 fumbles to three steals by Paine and benefited from 11 PC turnovers off one Badger steal.
 
Paine had four players reach double-digits as Compton led the way with 24 points and Jared Tate scored 23 off the bench. Paine shot 43.1% (31-72) from the field including a 34.1% (14-41) night from beyond the arc. The Lions also made 77.8% (14-18) of their free throw attempts.
 
The Badgers (2-10, 1-0 SIAC West) will next travel to Ft. Valley, Ga., on Thursday to face the Fort Valley State University (FVSU) Wildcats (4-7, 2-1 SIAC East) at 8 p.m. (EDT) at the HPE Complex.