EMCC Lions fall just short in regular-season hoops finale against Northeast Mississippi

SCOOBA – The East Mississippi Community College men's basketball team closed out the 2025-26 season by dropping a hard-fought 87-83 home decision to Northeast Mississippi during Monday's MACCC regular-season hoops finale played at Keyes T. Currie Coliseum.

Minus the firepower of their top three scoring leaders on the year for the second straight game, the home-standing Lions battled back from a 14-point, second-half deficit to give themselves a chance down the stretch despite trailing for most of the contest.

The visiting Tigers jumped out to a quick 6-0 lead on a pair of three-pointers by Buddy Spearman. They would maintain their lead throughout the opening half and well into the second stanza. After EMCC cut the deficit to four points (34-30) in the first half on a Curly Robinson trey, Northeast reclaimed a double-digit lead (47-36) heading into halftime.

Midway through the second half, EMCC's freshman backcourt tandem of Maurice Henderson and Jace O'Neal combined to score 13 unanswered points between them to bring the Lions back from a 13-point deficit (60-47). O'Neal's second trey during the surge knotted the score at 60-60 with eight minutes remaining in the game. Henderson's pair of made free throws at the 7:31 mark then gave the Lions their lone lead of the contest.

A minute later, Henderson's three-pointer tied the game at 65-65 with 6:22 left in the game. Northeast responded with nine unanswered points to seemingly reclaim control of the contest. The Tigers maintained a 10-point advantage (82-72) with just under two minutes remaining before EMCC scored eight straight points to pull to within a basket. Henderson was clutch again by following his made three-pointer with a putback basket of his own miss to cut the deficit to 82-80 with less than a minute left on the game clock.

EMCC's Jayden Tatum answered Javion Stephen's made trey with a triple of his own to again make it a two-point contest (85-83). Stephen then nailed two free throws with 17.2 ticks left to essentially seal the road win for the Tigers.

Henderson, a freshman point guard from Bronx, N.Y., finished with a career-high 27 points to lead all game scorers on 6-of-11 shooting from the field, including four treys, and 11-of-14 from the charity stripe. O'Neal, out of Columbus, followed with 17 points, aided by 9-of-10 free throw shooting. Henderson and O'Neal also added five assists apiece for EMCC.

Northeast was led in scoring by Ezekiel Udozorh and Stephen with 19 and 18 points, respectively,

Without the services of the team's three leading scorers on the year – Jordan Alexander (18.6 ppg), Diovion Famakinde (17.3 ppg) & DeAndre Lewis (16.1 ppg) – for a combined total of 27 games during the season, head coach Billy Begley's EMCC Lions finished the season just shy of the .500 mark with a 14-16 overall record while also staying in contention for a possible postseason berth until the final week of the regular season. EMCC's conference wins for the season came against Meridian (75-70 on Jan. 22), Southwest Mississippi (83-56 on Jan. 29), East Central (75-72 on Feb. 9), and Mississippi Delta (84-77 on Feb. 12).

The talented EMCC trio of Lewis, Alexander and Famakinde had the distinction of each earning MACCC Player of the Week honors during the course of the 2025-26 season. In addition, all three players have been recognized nationally by JucoRecruiting.com, with Lewis and Famakinde both ranked among the top 100 players for the 2026 JUCO class as well as Alexander making the Fab 50 JUCO freshmen list as one of the top 2027 JUCO prospects in the country.