With a highly-emotional huge crowd at Bloomer Sullivan Arena last week, Southeastern posted a conference basketball sweep of rival East Central.
Despite the death of his wife earlier in the week, Southeastern women’s coach Darin Grover was on the sideline and his troops delivered a 71-61 triumph over the visiting Lady Tigers. Coupled with a 60-56 win over Oklahoma Baptist on Saturday the Savage Storm extended their win streak to seven.
Southeastern’s men, meanwhile, forged a hard-fought 75-71 victory before a narrow 63-59 loss to nationally ninthranked Oklahoma Baptist.
Both teams will be back home on Saturday to face Harding University.
Women
Much like their overtime shootout earlier in the season, the women’s game was a nip-and-tuck affair through- out, including tied 48-48 after three periods before the Savage Storm took command for good.
The Savage Storm sank 55 percent from the field as well as nine of 11 from the free throw line over the final 10 minutes.
Balance was the key offensively with four players tallying double digits for Southeastern, including a team-high 17 points and eight rebounds by Kenzli Warden, who played all 40 minutes.
Tori Kilburn posted 15, Mackenzie Espinosa had 13 and Katie Allen scored 10.
Southeastern was looking to avenge a first semester loss to OBU and got just that thanks to a massive fourth quarter as they rallied from a 35-27 halftime deficit. They got another strong shooting effort in the fourth quarter with 56 percent from the field.
The Savage Storm also took advantage of Lady Bison miscues with 22 points for the game off 18 OBU turnovers.
Kilburn was virtually unstoppable inside with 20 points and 11 rebounds to go along with four blocked shots. Warden scored 10, Akiera Hawk had nine with eight apiece from Allen and Espinosa.
Men
The Savage Storm built as much as an 11-point lead in the second half and held off multiple runs by the visitors thanks to a whopping 42 points in the paint for the game. Coupled with that was winning the rebounding battle as well as sinking 15 of 21 from the charity stripe for the night.
A massive spark came off the bench from Southeastern as Jalen Williams pumped in a season and career high 20 points off seven of nine field goal shooting along a perfect six for six effort at the free throw line.
The veteran duo of Ethan Wilkerson and Chandler Dickinson were solid once again as each tallied double figures offensively. Wilkerson connected on six of 10 from the field for 16 points and eight rebounds while Dickinson hit five of 10 field goals to total 13 points and seven boards.
Key contributions also came from the guard combo of Santiago Camacho Gomez and Saxon McWilliam, providing eight and seven points respectively.
Scoring inside was much more difficult against a larger OBU squad, but the Savage Storm managed to keep things close as they were only outrebounded 38-36 for the game.
Southeastern held a narrow 26-25 halftime advantage in a first half defensive slugfest and was even leading by four with 12 minutes to play before the ninth-rated Bison connected for their lone three treys of the game.
Despite rough outside shooting, Dickinson still paced the scoring charge with 16 points with Camacho Gomez hitting for 11. Wilkerson narrowly missed a double-double with nine points and nine rebounds.
