Beaumont Beasley at Illinois-Springfield Saturday, Jan. 23. (Photo: Michelle Kaufman for The Current)
The University of Missouri-St. Louis men’s basketball team had its season ended last Saturday when it lost 74-60 to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside (UWP) in the first round of the Great Lakes Valley Conference Championship Tournament.
Guard Jeremy Brown, senior, physical education, and forward Zach Redel, sophomore, undecided, each scored 14 points and grabbed seven rebounds to lead the Tritons. But it was not enough to overcome a 15-point deficit, as UM-St. Louis fell behind 51-36 midway through the second half.
The Tritons did rally from that point and put together a 10-0 run, capped by a deep three-pointer by Brown, to cut their deficit back to 51-46 with 7:34 left in the game.
Moments later, UWP added a couple of free throws to push ahead by eight, but UM-St. Louis guard Eddie White, junior, elementary education, hit a three-pointer of his own, and teammate Ryan Lawrence, junior, criminology, made a jumper to make the score 56-51 with just over five minutes left on the clock.
Unfortunately, UWP’s Jeremy Saffold, who had a game-high 15 points, made several key plays down the stretch to keep UM-St. Louis from completing its comeback attempt.
First, the freshman forward from Chicago grabbed an offensive rebound and turned it into a three-point play when he made a jumper and got fouled. Later, he grabbed another important rebound and then made two more free throws after he was fouled by the Tritons.
But the play that felt like a dagger to the heart of the Tritons was a three-pointer Saffold hit to put UWP back up by 10 points with only 2:40 left in the game.
From that point, UM-St. Louis was forced to gamble for steals and fouls, hoping to pull off some kind of miracle. But it just did not happen, as UWP went eight-for-eight from the free throw line in the final couple minutes to put the game away.
White and fellow guard Beaumont Beasley, sophomore, business, contributed 10 points apiece for UM-St. Louis, which ended its season by losing 11 of its final 13 games.
That is a far cry from where the team started the year—winning a school-record six straight games to open the season.
At different points of the year, the Tritons even owned glowing records at 6-0, 7-1 and 10-5, but the 2009-10 campaign proved to be the epitome of a sports roller coaster, and unfortunately, the ride ended in very disappointing fashion.
On a positive note, UM-St. Louis did manage to make its first postseason appearance since 2005 by earning a trip to this year’s GLVC Tournament. But Saturday’s loss to UWP means the Tritons are now 0-5 all-time in GLVC Tournament play, and the program has not won a postseason game since defeating Missouri Western in an MIAA Conference Tournament game in 1996.
Officially, UM-St. Louis ended the season with an overall record of 12-16, the third time in the last four years the team reached double-digits in wins, but the second time in the last three years the team finished with a losing record.
