TIGERS RIDE LONGSHOT TO VICTORY

SIKESTON -- Few things pump up basketball teams like 75-foot 3-pointers.

Cape Girardeau Central junior guard Donnie McClinton detonated a bomb from the right of the opposite free-throw line as time expired in the third quarter Friday night to give the Tigers a 39-37 lead -- and a confidence boost.

The Tigers rode the momentum for the rest of the game and knocked off Sikeston 52-47.

"I just threw it up," said McClinton, who scored a team-high 18 points. "It hit the backboard and went in. It got the crowd hyped and us hyped."

"It was a big shot and it was a momentum swinger," Sikeston coach Gregg Holifield said. "In a situation like that, you just have to battle back. I thought Cape, after they made the shot, played really well in the fourth quarter. They took care of the basketball."

Speaking of long shots, the win assured Central of at least a tie in the SEMO Conference. The Tigers, who were not favored to win the conference title, improved to 4-0 and 11-11 overall. Every other team in the conference has at least two losses and Central has just two conference games remaining.

Sikeston dropped to 12-10 and 2-2.

Before McClinton's blessing from the basketball gods, Central was struggling to keep pace with the Bulldogs in the third.

The Tigers trailed by as many as five in the quarter after owning a lead as big as eight in the second quarter.

But in the fourth quarter, Central junior post player Ross Conner provided a little magic of his own, scoring nine of his 17 points.

"I was calling for the ball a lot (in the fourth)," Conner said. "My teammates gave it to me and we kept the pressure on them."

Conner (6-foot-4) and Sikeston's Bryan Ellitt, both juniors, waged an epic battle in the paint.

Ellitt provided a game-high 21 points for the Bulldogs, while Conner, who was hindered with foul trouble in the second quarter, ended up with 17.

"(Our battles) are usually pretty good," Conner said. "We've been playing each other since the fourth or fifth grade. It's good competition."

Reutzel, who watched Sikeston go on a 15-7 run after Conner picked up his second foul with 6 minutes to go in the first half, wisely chose to keep him on the bench.

Sikeston led 28-26 at halftime, but Conner had three more fouls to spare.

"You just can't have your dominant post player with three fouls starting the second half," Reutzel said. "If he gets that fourth one early in the second half he's done until the beginning of the fourth quarter."

During that span in the second quarter, McClinton kept Central afloat. The 5-foot-11 slasher used a nifty hesitation-dribble move to find his way to the basket and score 11 first-half points.

"I'm trying to master that," McClinton said of the move where he dribbles three or four steps, backs up, lulls the defender, then explodes to the basket. "I need to work on my left hand.

"I had to step up without Ross. I just did what I could do."

"I thought we played well as a team," Reutzel said. "There was a time where Donnie seemed to be doing a lot of dribbling, but people weren't moving for him. I thought he stepped up in some crucial times in the first half."

Central's biggest lead in the fourth quarter was seven points, 51-44, with :41.6 left.

Sikeston cut the lead to 51-47 with :16 left when Andre Morgan drained a three, but the Bulldogs never got the ball back.

Sikeston's Brandon Barnes, who received a football scholarship to attend the University of Missouri, added 14 points.