About eight minutes before the end of the game, SLU had taken the lead and held it until the last second, when Lok Wur missed the front end of a one-on-one, but got the rebound from his own miss, turned around and shot without looking and scored . SLU’s desperate inbounds game never got going as Kobe Johnson’s long inbounds pass to Robbie Avila at midfield went wide and Avila caught it out of bounds.

SLU is 6-6 and has one more non-conference game against William Woods on Saturday at Chaifetz Arena.

Isaiah Swope scored 17 points while five Billikens reached double figures. Kalu Anya had 12 and Robbie Avila, Gibson Jimerson and Kobe Johnson each had 11 points.

SLU went from down-five at halftime to up-1 in less than two minutes as the three-pointers that refused to go down in the first half began to fall. The comeback became difficult, however, when Avila suffered his fourth foul, an offensive foul in the key while trying to make his way to the basket, and coach Josh Schertz had to begin a tightrope over when to reinstate Avila.

SLU made it easier by staying close, and with 9:01 left and SLU trailing by three, Avila got back into the game. SLU then went on a 6-0 run to take a 65-63 lead and thought it had a four-point lead when the goalie was called due to a drive to the basket by Jimerson that came off the board.

Kalu Anya made two free throws to put SLU back ahead by three points, but with 2:20 left, Grand Canyon’s Collin Moore hit a 3 to tie the game. Avila answered with a 3 to put SLU back on top with 1:49 left. Avila was blocked on a drive and GCU’s Wur made a layin with 46.6 seconds left. But SLU failed to score on its next two possessions as Avila blocked a shot and on the next possession Swope blocked a shot, resulting in a shot clock violation.

Kellen Thames missed his second straight game with a hip flexor strain, leaving SLU coach Josh Schertz once again with one less option at the guard position. Both Swope and Jimerson got short breaks in the first half, and when Jimerson was substituted with 8:25 left in the half, his run of consecutive minutes of play ended at 91 minutes and 35 seconds, going back to the end of the Chicago State game, when Schertz was able to clear his bench.

SLU trailed by as many as 13 points in the first half, and after trailing 32-19 – at which point it had made just 2 of 15 3-point attempts – it used a 13-5 run at halftime to win Cutting the lead made the score 37-32. Almost all of it came from Swope, who scored all 11 of the first half’s points in the final five minutes.