ROLLA, Mo. – Missouri S&T's hopes of making the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament took a hit Thursday night when it was unable to complete a rally from a 19-point second half deficit in an 89-85 loss to Missouri-St. Louis at Billy Key Court.

The Miners beat the Tritons in St. Louis in December after trailing by 18 at one point, but couldn't pull off another huge rally and fell to 4-12 in the GLVC and 8-17 overall.  UMSL went to 11-14 overall and moved one game ahead of the Miners in the league standings at 5-11 – as did Illinois Springfield, who upended Southern Indiana Thursday to knock S&T outside the top 12 with just two regular season games remaining.

S&T trailed by 12 at halftime after UMSL's Brandon Marquardt fired in a three-pointer just before the buzzer sounded, then the Tritons withstood an early flurry by the Miners to start the second half to push their advantage to 19 with 10:55 left after Alex Majewski hit a pair of free throws.

The Miners started clawing their way back, in large part behind the shooting of freshman Allen Billinger (Carbondale, Ill./Carbondale), and got the lead inside of double figures when he knocked down a three-pointer with 7:03 remaining.  After UMSL got its lead back to 13 moments later, S&T made a run to bring the lead down to six after a steal and basket by the freshman.

Danylo Zuikov (Kiev, Ukraine/LaLumiere School)'s three-pointer with 2:49 left got S&T to within four and another three-pointer by Desmond Buerge (Carthage, Mo./Carthage) made it a four-point game again with 1:39 to play.  However, Hunter Reine – a 55 percent free throw shooter who had just missed two at the line prior to Buerge's trey – hit a pair at the line with 1:28 to go.

However, S&T couldn't get the lead down to a one-possession game following the Reine free throws, getting it down to four three different times but no closer than that.

UMSL led for a majority of the first half, going up for good just under seven minutes into the contest as it went 19-of-28 from the floor in the first half.  The Miners were able to hang close throughout the first 20 minutes by going seven-of-11 from beyond the arc.

Billinger led all scorers in the game with a career-high 22 points while B.J. McLaughlin (Florissant, Mo./Hazelwood Central), one of three seniors playing in their final home game Thursday, finished with 16 as did Rokas Paulauskas (Talsiai, Lithuania/Hamilton Heights Acad.).  The Miners outrebounded the Tritons 37-24 thanks to Paulauskas who finished with 18 in the game, the most by an S&T player since Brian Westre pulled down 21 in a 2002 game against Harris-Stowe.

The Tritons had four players in double figures, led by Marquardt with 19 points and Majewski with 16.  UMSL finished the game shooting 61.5 percent from the floor, while the Miners ended the night at 45.5 percent.

Missouri S&T plays its final two scheduled games on the road, beginning with Saturday's 3 p.m. game against Maryville University in St. Louis.