FRISCO, Texas (AP) — Southern Miss’ Cinderella journey through the early rounds of the Conference USA men’s basketball tournament came to an abrupt end in the semifinals on Friday.

Jon Elmore scored 26 points and drained a timely 3-pointer after a seemingly comfortable lead disappeared to hold off Southern Miss 85-75 in the Conference USA semifinals on Friday and advance to the championship game for the second-straight year.

Marshall (23-10), the No. 4 seed, will meet third-seeded Western Kentucky (24-9) in Saturday’s championship game.

Ninth-seeded Southern Miss (16-18) toppled two-time defending C-USA champion and No. 1-seeded Middle Tennessee, 71-68, in overtime in the quarterfinals on Thursday. Its two wins in the tournament — the first time it has accomplished that feat since 2012 — put a smile on coach Doc Sadler’s face.

“We’re disappointed for sure, but at the same time, I told the team that when we look back on it, we’re going to look at some really good times,” Sadler said. “We’re disappointed that it didn’t turn out a little bit better today, but it wasn’t because of a lack of effort on our players part. It would’ve been easy to duck our head, but if we were that type of team we wouldn’t have even been playing today.”

Marshall (23-10) went 9-for-18 from beyond the arc in the first half and led 47-27 at halftime. The lead got as high as 24 points, at 64-40, on a 3-pointer by Elmore with 12:13 left in the game.

The Golden Eagles steadily whittled that gap down to six, 71-65, with three minutes left. Marshall had gone without a field goal for the better part of six minutes and Southern Miss was on an 11-0 run.
That’s when Elmore stepped up to hit the big 3-pointer with 2:13 remaining, to blunt the Golden Eagles rally. Marshall was 10-for-10 at the line in the last 1:14.

“We lost our composure and weren’t able to hold it together in that stretch,” Sadler said. “We missed easy baskets, missed a free-throw in there. When you’re struggling offensively, you would like to be able to go to the low-post and stop the momentum and get an easy basket, we just weren’t able to do that.”

Elmore was 7-of-7 at the line and made five 3-pointers with nine rebounds and nine assists. Jannson Williams added 17 points.

Cortez Edwards led the Southern Miss comeback with 30 points on 12-of-19 shooting, his fourth-straight game of 20 or more. Tyree Griffin added 19 and former Vicksburg High star D’Angelo Richardson had four points and two rebounds in his final college game.