ROLLA, Mo. – Following its thrilling overtime win at Quincy on Monday, Missouri S&T's men's basketball team returns to Gibson Arena for a pair of home contests this week in rematches of earlier games in Great Lakes Valley Conference play.

The Miners' 90-84 overtime at Quincy Monday ended a four-game losing streak for S&T and upped its records for the season to 7-9 overall and 3-6 in the GLVC.  It will take those marks into Thursday's 7:30 p.m. matchup against GLVC West Division leader Southwest Baptist before it takes on Rockhurst at 3 p.m. Saturday.

Missouri S&T overcame nine-point deficits in both halves of Monday's contest and got the game into overtime on a basket by Micah Johnson (Ankeny, IA/Centennial) with nine seconds to play in the second half, then outscored the Hawks 16-10 in the extra period as it had a perfect shooting performance in overtime as the Miners made all five field goal attempts as well as all six free throws.

Julien Smith (Fort Worth, TX/Northwest) led the Miners with 26 points in the victory and enters the weekend action across the conference as the GLVC's leading scorer with an average of 19.8 points per game.  He is also among the league leaders with 54 three-point baskets (3.3 per game, ranking third) and free throw shooting at 83.1 percent, while also shooting 41.5 percent from beyond the arc.

Smith got help in the scoring column Monday from S&T's other two double figure scorers for the season.  Kaden Froebe (Lincoln, IL/Lincoln) added 16 points and is averaging 11.4 points heading into the SBU contest, while also leading the team with 40 assists and 29 steals.  Meanwhile, Alex Strating (Wassenaar, Netherlands/American School of the Hague) scored a career-high 22 points in the win and is third in the GLVC with a 62.3 percent shooting percentage from the field; he is also second to Froebe in assists with 39.

The Miners have a fourth player among the conference leaders in Mahamadou Kaba-Camera (Conakry, Guinea/Balboa City (San Diego, CA)), who has blocked 20 shots on the year and ranks sixth in the conference in that department.

ABOUT SOUTHWEST BAPTIST: The Bearcats come into Thursday's game at 11-2 overall and leads the GLVC West with a 5-1 conference mark after beating William Jewell in a showdown for first place Monday 61-49 in Liberty.  Mitch Ganote led three Bearcats in double figures with 14 points while also adding three assists and two steals.  SBU has won its last two contests after suffering its only conference loss at Quincy on Jan. 6.

Quinn Nelson leads a balanced Bearcat offensive attack with an average of 13.4 points per game and is SBU's top three-point shooter with 37 on the season at a clip of 43 percent.  Jalil Beaubrun, who has blocked a league-high 27 shots this season, is also scoring 13.2 points per game and Ganote is scoring 12.6 points per game while also leading the Bearcats in rebounding with 7.2 per game, assists with 59 and steals with 27 while shooting 55.2 percent from the floor.  

RJ Crawford is the fourth Bearcat in double figures at 12.5 points per game.  The Bearcats are not only the second-best shooting team in the GLVC at 49.7 percent, they are also the best in the league on the defensive end as teams are making just 39.2 percent of their shots against them.

S&T hit just 36.8 percent of its shots against the Bearcats when the teams met on Dec. 4 in Bolivar, a game won by the Bearcats 70-51.  Crawford had 19 points to lead all scorers in that game as SBU hit 13 three-point shots.

ABOUT ROCKHURST: The Hawks return to play this week with a game at Maryville on Thursday, which will be only Rockhurst's second game since Jan. 4.  In the only game the Hawks have played since then, they picked up their first GLVC win by knocking off Drury on Saturday 78-71 in Kansas City to move to 6-9 overall and 1-4 in the GLVC.

The Hawks got significant contributions from two players seeing their first action of the season against Drury, as Jihad Thornton scored 17 points and Maxim Romanov finished with 14 in his first appearance in that game.  The Hawks have three others averaging in double figures on the year in Nick Volz, Jake Auer and Rich Byhre, the latter of whom missed the first meeting between the teams on Jan. 2.

Volz led the Hawks with 15 in that first matchup with S&T and leads his team with an average of 15.4 points per contest, while Auer is averaging 14.9 per game and Byhre 11.3.  Auer has been one of the top three-point shooters in the GLVC this season as he has made 51 and is shooting 39.5 percent from beyond the arc, but was successful just once in eight tries from long range in the Miners' 82-62 win earlier this month.

The Hawks made only 32.2 percent of their shots from the field in the first matchup but as a team, rank second in the conference with 9.2 three-point baskets per game.  Besides Auer's 51 treys, Byhre has made 21 from three-point land and Rhon Thaci has connected 18 times from there.