ROLLA, Mo. – Back in the Deaconess Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament for the first time since 2012, Missouri S&T's men's basketball team will look to advance to the quarterfinal round in Evansville, Ind., Sunday when it heads to the road to take on the University of Missouri-St. Louis in a 3 p.m. contest.

The Miners beat the Tritons 85-79 in their only meeting this season in Rolla, as S&T outscored UMSL 10-4 over the final 2:04 of play and 49-39 in the second half. S&T comes into Sunday's game as the ninth seed in the tournament with a 7-11 conference record – 12-14 overall – while UMSL finished 9-9 in league play to earn the eighth seed and owns a 15-11 overall mark.

Bryce Foster (Florissant, Mo./Hazelwood Central), the Miners' leading scorer on the season with an average of 21.6 points per game, scored 30 points Thursday in S&T's 88-67 setback to fifth-ranked Drury at Billy Key Court. Foster is second in the GLVC and 20^th in NCAA Division II in the scoring department after recording his eighth game with at least 25 points on the year.

The only other Miner in double figures Thursday was sophomore guard Zachary Ellis (St. Louis, Mo./Whitfield School) with 12 points, as S&T's other two double figure scorers for the year, Mudiaga Eruteya (Chicago, Ill./Notre Dame) and Nusrath Khan (Morton Grove, Ill./Maine East), were held to a combined 11 points.

Eruteya is averaging 17.2 points a game, the eighth-best mark in the GLVC, while leading the league in steals with 61 and ranking among the conference leaders in rebounds (7.2 per game) and assists (123). Khan is scoring 13.8 a contest and is shooting 41.7 percent from three-point range.

As a team, the Miners are averaging 9.3 three-pointers per game and have made 241 on the season, the third-most in any season in school history. They rank fifth in Division II in scoring with a league-best 89 points per game.

UMSL pulled out a 68-66 victory Thursday at Maryville to secure the eighth seed for Sunday's game, as Femi John scored with 19 seconds to play to break a tie and then rebounded a miss on a last-second attempt by the Saints to send the game to overtime.

John is among three Tritons averaging in double figures with his average of 12.7 points a game, along with Tylor Wimbish at a team-high 14.8 a game and Darian Cartharn at 10.4 per contest. Aaeron Smith is UMSL's leader on the boards with 5.8 per game and Michael Weber has a team-high 78 assists.

While the Miners lead the conference in three-point baskets per game, the Tritons are the GLVC's top three-point shooting team in terms of percentage at 39.5 percent. Cartharn has made 63 treys this season while Weber has made 59 and is shooting 45.7 percent from long range.

In the first meeting between the teams on Jan. 25, Eruteya led all scorers with 27 points and hit the go-ahead free throws for S&T with 2:04 to play, while Foster finished with 21 points. Wimbish led the Tritons with 26 and John added 21 before fouling out late in the contest; the two combined to go 20-of-28 from the field while the rest of UMSL's team was 13-of-38 (34.2 percent) and as a whole, was just five-of-21 from three-point land.

Game Notes: Miners vs. Missouri-St. Louis

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