Conerway’s 17 lead Troy over Southern Miss 70-61

For the second consecutive game, the Troy men’s basketball team played a smothering defense to come away with a 70-61 win over Southern Miss on Monday night in Trojan Arena.

The Troy (13-7, 6-3 SBC) defense held Southern Miss (9-12, 4-5 SBC) to 39.7 percent shooting, including 6-19 from three while forcing the Golden Eagles into 16 turnovers to secure the home victory.

On the other side of the court, the Trojans shot 40 percent from the field and 36 percent form 3-point range. Tayton Conerway once again shined putting up a team-high 17 points on 5-10 shooting, while also dishing out four assists and snagging three steals. The senior guard now has three-plus assists and two-plus steals in 18 of 20 games this season. Thomas Dowd also had his best game of the season, scoring a season-high 15 points. He came up just one rebound shy of his first double-double of the 2024-25 campaign.

Both teams were scoreless for the first 2:50 of the game, but Troy found its rhythm and exploded on a 12-1 run to take control of the game and a lead it never relinquished. The Trojans continued expanding its lead as the half progressed and were up 36-21 with 2:22 left before the break and ended up taking a 39-26 advantage into halftime.

Conerway had 13 of his points in the first half, while Dowd had nine.

The Trojans strong first half play carried over into the second half, as the Trojans quickly pushed their lead to 32 going into the second media timeout of the final 20 minutes. With 8:20 left in regulation the Trojans held their largest lead of the night – 27 – after a Myles Rigsby layup made the score 65-38. The Troy defense held Southern Miss scoreless from the 16:05 mark to the 8:36 mark.

Southern Miss didn’t go down without a fight though, as it outscored Troy 20-4 in the final 7:36 of the game to make the final deficit just nine. Denijay Harris finished the night as the games leading scorer with 21 points and seven rebounds for the Golden Eagles.

In addition to Conerway and Dowd’s double-digit scoring performances, Theo Seng had 10 points – all in the second half – for Troy.

“I thought for the majority of the game we played outstanding defense and did a great job rebounding the basketball. But the last 10 minutes we got really, really sloppy. Turned the ball over five or six times, gave up three or four offensive rebounds, didn’t defend, didn’t dive on the floor for loose balls and made stupid fouls. So, it was disappointing. That’s a game where guys like Kameryn Mitchell, Braydon Whitaker and Jackson Porch should have played like six minutes in that game. We didn’t do what we needed to do.”

The Trojans will stay home for its next two games, and welcome Georgia Southern to Trojan Arena on Thursday night. Tipoff is slated for 6 p.m. and will be broadcast on EPSN+ and the Troy Sports Media Network.

(Courtesy: Troy Athletics)