by BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The Millsaps men’s basketball team lost their SAA opener, 81-58 at Birmingham Southern Tuesday afternoon. The Majors are now 3-9 on the season and 0-1 in the conference. BSC improves to 4-8 overall and 1-0 in SAA play.
Sophomore She’Chem Grant (Choctaw/Navajo)led the Majors with 19 points on 7-12 shooting, knocking down three from distance. Senior Sam Kohnke came away with ten points and seven rebounds, while sophomore Buck Blanz finished with ten points off the bench. Freshman Kalvin Spikes started his first game of the season and grabbed ten rebounds to go with seven points.
Grant scored five of the first seven points for Millsaps, keeping the game close in the early going. With BSC on top 8-7, the Panthers proceeded to go on an 11-2 run to give the home team a 19-9 cushion with 11:11 left in the first half.
Layups by James Turner and Blanz kept Millsaps in the game, cutting the deficit to 25-18 with 6:34 until halftime. As the clock ticked down to halftime, BSC broke away, using an 18-6 run to take a 43-24 lead at the break.
Millsaps opened the second half by scoring the first ten points to make it a nine-point deficit (45-36) with 17:49 to go. That was stopped when the Panthers exploded for 10-2 run of their own over the next minute and a half to extend the BSC lead to 53-36 with 16:04 left.
BSC used that boost to build their lead and did not look back for the rest of the game, holding the Majors off, handing Millsaps the loss.
The Majors are back in action on Friday at Sewanee, game time is scheduled for 8:00 p.m.
