CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. – The roar of the crowd as the buzzer sounded said it all Saturday night as Southeast Missouri’s final shot of the game likely spoiled the Panthers hopes of a conference championship.

With just 35.3 seconds remaining, Panther freshman forward Jesse Mackinson drove the lane, made contact with an Indian defender and hit a shot that would have given Eastern (16-9, 9-5) a 75-73 advantage. But instead, Mackinson was called on a questionable charge, and SEMO (16-11, 6-8) was left with a chance to win the game on its final possession.

With just a .3 second differential between the shot and game clocks, the Indians were in the position to take the final shot of regulation. After a timeout, Indian senior guard Michael Stokes dribbled the ball as the clock ran down to just over three seconds remaining.

“The play was drawn up for Stokey to drive the lane, take a shot or kick it out,” senior forward Emmanuel McCuthison said. “He took the shot and I crashed the boards and just tried to get the tip.”

McCuthison did get the tip, in fact, he tipped it in, putting the Indians up 75-73 with just one second left. After a pair of Panther timeouts, Eastern sophomore guard Henry Domercant caught the inbounds pass and threw up a half court shot which fell short as the buzzer sounded.

“We were in the game,” Panther head coach Rick Samuels said. “It’s a different game if we get a break here or there – a break like Jesse Mackinson’s basket which would have enabled us to take the lead.”

While McCuthison’s tip-in won the game for the Indians, Mackinson’s charge may have lost it for the Panthers.

“The charge down at our basket, I don’t know if that’s the right call,” Samuels said. “I’m going to review the game tape, and I’ll be prejudiced toward our side, certainly.

“That was a situation where we had the chance to take the lead and not give them the last possession to win the game,” he said.

While Samuels said his players showed a lack of defensive intensity at times, he said the reason his team lost was basic – they were simply outshot.

“Well, certainly it was a very exciting basketball game and SEMO continues to have the late-season high shooting percentages,” Samuels said. “They’ve shot 60 percent the last couple games and shoot 56 percent (Saturday).

“That’s awful tough to overcome, and they only missed one free throw.”

Another break that didn’t go Eastern’s way was free-throw shooting, as the nation’s leading team at the charity stripe missed an uncharacteristic five of 15 free-throw attempts.

We did not make free throws like we normally make free throws,” Samuels said. “That was a break that could have made a difference.”

The Indians attribute the win to their defensive strategy.

“We changed our game plan from the last time we played them,” said McCuthison, who led the Indians with 14 points. “Last time we played them, we played with a defense that was focused on guarding two people. This time we went back to our regular defense.

“We focused on Hill and Domercant too much in the first game,” Indian senior guard Antonio Short said. “The difference in this game is that we didn’t double team them like we did every time last game.”

While SEMO did come away with the win, Hill and Domercant did combine to score 53 of the Panthers’ 73 points. Domercant, the nations No. 2 scorer, finished with 23 points while Hill, the 11th leading scorer in the nation, scored a season-high and game-high 30 points, 22 of which came in the second half.

“Kyle was absolutely superb tonight,” said senior point guard Matt Britton, who finished the game with eight rebounds, nine points and nine assists. “He deserved to win this game. I hate it for him.

“I wish we could have made a play or two more to help win this game,” he said. “Kyle left everything he had on the court and it was very admirable for a senior.”

The Indians said they approached Saturday’s contest as a championship game, knowing a loss would pretty much eliminate the Panthers’ hopes for an Ohio Valley Conference championship.

“We listened to them before the game,” McCuthison said. “They were all talking about being OVC Champions and all this before the game.

“We said, `We’ll see tonight,’ and we just layed it all out on the line,” he said.

“Our kids are disappointed,” Samuels said. “We thought we had a chance to win a conference championship and it now appears we won’t have that opportunity.

“Who knows? If we win our last two, the two teams ahead of us, Murray (State) and (Tennessee) Tech, have some tough games, and they play each other,” he said. “So somebody is going to drop down, we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.”

Meanwhile, the Panthers can only look forward to battling for an OVC tournament championship and an automatic NCAA bid.

“That’s where we have to look now, because this pretty much eliminates us from the conference championship-most likely,” Britton said. “We’d have to get a lot of help.

“So now we just have to head back to Lantz and hopefully we’ll have another good crowd behind us, win these last two games and get momentum,” he said. “Then we’d get one more game at Lantz in the tournament and then go to Nashville and win the thing.”