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MOBILE, Ala. – University of South Alabama sophomore Ken Williams (Houston, Texas) hit two free throws with 3.0 seconds left and the Jaguars survived an Arkansas-Little Rock attempt at the buzzer to win 66-64 Monday night at the Mitchell Center.

USA wins for the second straight game to even its Sun Belt Conference record at 4-4 and improve to 6-12 overall. UALR drops to 6-11 and 1-6.

"First and foremost, I'm very proud and excited that we got the win," Jaguar head coach Matthew Graves said. "That was a huge game for us to follow up Saturday's road win, to come back and play Monday, that's our third game in five days. I thought we did an outstanding job. Once we got behind, we did a great job of digging in defensively and attacking the basket. The thing I am most proud of, you can start to see steps where this team is learning because if you rewind, say six weeks ago in a game like this, the stat sheet would say we attempted about 25-30 threes and 10 free throws. We kept attacking and kept fighting, some plays you would like to have back, but we fought the whole way.

"You also have to give credit to UALR. Coach (Steve) Shields and his staff did a great job. They're down an all-league type post player and they came in here and fought all the way to the end. It would have been very easy for them to roll over when we got up about 14, but they hung tough and fought all the way down. So you have to give credit to how they fought too."

South Alabama led by as many as 14 early in the second half and was up 12 midway through the period before UALR went on a 15-3 run in a span of 6:56—aided by eight USA turnovers—with a combined 12 points coming from Josh Hagins and Roger Woods. James Reid's lone contribution tied the game at 61-61 on a jumper with 3:31 left.

Freshman Abdul Lewis (Newark, N.J.) answered for the Jaguars and a free throw from junior Barrington Stevens III (Allen, Texas) with just under a minute left put USA up three, but the Trojans got three free throws in the final 40.9 seconds, the final two from Hagins at the 15.5 mark to tie the game at 64-64.

Williams took possession on his half of the court and drove the rest of the way before getting fouled. He made both after a Trojan timeout, and Hagins' attempt at the buzzer was short.

"I told him 'they're treating you like a field goal kicker. You're going to be just fine. You've already gotten your misses out of the way. Just relax, make two and we're going to go home with the win,'" Graves said. "He stepped up and did a great job."

While South Alabama had eight turnovers in that seven-minute stretch, it had 12 in the second half and 18 for the contest, leading to 22 Arkansas-Little Rock points.

"It's very contagious," Graves noted. "It was a bad pass to Dionte (Ferguson), someone trying to over dribble... The one thing I can fault our guys is, we always want to be in attack mode. I felt like at about the 10-minute mark, we kind of put the brakes on. You would like to be able to run the clock and be patient. We don't have that in our DNA just yet. We need to keep our pedal on until we get under the four-minute mark. I think that was a learning thing for us and with eight to 10 minutes to go in a game there are so many possessions and some many things can happen. We have to understand, you get someone on the ropes, you have to keep fighting and pushing. We let off for about three or four minutes and when we tried to get that gear going again, that's when we ran into our comedy of errors and mistakes. We were fortunate enough to just make enough plays at the end to get the win."

The Jags put four in double-digit scoring, led by Williams' 20 points, his fifth straight 20-point outing. He made three 3-pointers, tied his career high with seven rebounds and dished out a team-best four assists.

"I'm really proud of how Ken is playing in league play," Graves said. "In these last few games he has really stepped up, and his hard work from the summer and fall didn't really play a lot of dividends in the non-conference (schedule). Part of that was he wouldn't get to the free-throw line. I think you go back and look at his stats now and how many times he's getting to the free-throw line and his shooting percentage has really increased. It's that attacking, aggressive mindset. It doesn't matter, if you're a scorer and you're able to get to the free-throw line and you see the ball go through the net, that just expands your game exponentially. He has done a great job."

Senior Dionte Ferguson (Prattville, Ala.) had 15 points and seven rebounds, freshman Taishaun Johnson (Indianapolis, Ind.) recorded 12 points, and Lewis added 10.

For the Trojans, Hagins led all players with 23 points off the bench and Woods added 15 and nine boards.

South Alabama goes to Appalachian State in its first-ever trip to Boone, N.C. Thursday at 6:30 p.m. CST.

NOTES: South Alabama scored its fewest points since scoring 60 in an overtime loss to Arkansas State on Dec. 30 to open league play; the team was averaging 82.6 points in its last six outings… The Jaguars also scored under 71 points for the first time since the Arkansas State loss, the longest streak by the program since 2002-03… Defensively, the Jags allowed the fewest points since Dec. 30 as well; prior to tonight, USA was giving up 84.7 per game since then… The Jaguars won for the first time this season when scoring fewer than 70 points… South Alabama won the shooting battle 44.7 percent to 38.7 percent, outshooting the opponent for the sixth time in eight games after not outshooting an opponent in the first 10… Williams failed to extend his scoring streak of 23 or more points to five games, something that hasn't happened in school history in over 25 years… Williams did become the 14th player in school history to hit the 100-mark for career 3-pointers; he has 102… The Jaguars' 18 turnovers came one game after committing just eight—their second-fewest of the year—at Louisiana-Lafayette… USA lost the rebounding battle 43-34 and has been outrebounded by 26 over the last three games… Ferguson converted 4-for-10 from the floor for his first sub-.500 shooting night since the start of conference play… The Jaguars have shot 50 percent or better from the floor in a half nine times in their last 14 games after going 10-for-20 in the second half tonight… Hagins' 23 points is the most by a USA opponent this season.

For more information about South Alabama athletics, check back with www.usajaguars.com, and follow the Jaguars at www.twitter.com/USAJaguarSports. Season tickets for all Jaguar athletic events can be purchased by calling (251) 461-1USA (1872).

—USA—