Among the many sayings Mississippi University for Women men’s basketball coach Dean Burrows has is “stay ready.”

Milos Zeradjanin got that message, and it was a big reason the Owls captured their first win of the season on Thursday night at Pohl Gym. 

Zeradjanin erupted for 17 second-half points, and Terryonte Thomas topped 20 points for the fourth consecutive game as the Owls rallied from 16 points down early in the second half to post a wild 70-68 win over Blue Mountain.

“He put us on his back there,” Burrows said of Zeradjanin. “He’s capable of that.”

As is Thomas, but Thomas, who totaled 28 points and 8 rebounds, has been a dominant force since he became eligible after transferring from Sam Houston State while Zeradjanin saw his playing time dwindle before the home-and-home against the Toppers.

The sophomore from Serbia by way of Crenshaw Christian High School in Alabama averaged 23.5 minutes per game through the first six contests but then played just 21 minutes combined in the next two. He then struggled through a rough outing in the first game against Blue Mountain and was scoreless at halftime Thursday night.

But he was ready.

“I just think somebody had to bring energy, and it just happened that in this game, it was me,” Zeradjanin said. “Last game it was somebody else.”

Zeradjanin, who has started every game, and Thomas, a senior who has only been an Owl for four, simply took over the game, combining to score the Owls’ first 21 points of the second half. But that didn’t put much of a dent in the Toppers’ lead, which was 41-29 at the half and topped out at 47-31. A Vatangoe Donzo dunk put the Toppers up by 10 with 9:05 to go.

Still, The W kept chipping away, pulling within four at 62-58 with more than 6 minutes left. When the lead stretched back to eight, the Owls scored eight consecutive points, two 3s by Zeradjanin sandwiching a putback by Thomas Wright, to forge a 66-66 tie at the 3:32 mark.

An anxious 2 minutes with no scoring followed until Blue Mountain’s Exavian Young scored his only basket of the game to put the Toppers up 68-66 with 1:36 left. But the Owls answered, with Zeradjanin foiling Blue Mountain’s zone by finding Thomas for a tying layup with 1:09 left.

Luka Tejic drove for a go-ahead basket for the Toppers but missed, and the Owls came down the floor with less than a minute to go. There were 22 seconds left when Thomas drove to the basket for a layup that put the Owls ahead 70-68.

There was plenty of time for the Toppers to get off a good shot, but they didn’t get off any shot at all, turning the ball over with less than 10 seconds to go. The irony was not lost on Burrows, whose team had been plagued by turnovers all season.

“We talk about turning the ball over,” he said, looking at the stat sheet upstairs after the game. “They had 15 points off our turnovers in the first half, and that’s what they finished the game with, so that’s huge.”

Blue Mountain only had four team fouls to that point, so the Toppers had to foul three times in the final seconds just to get the Owls to the line. Thomas was fouled after taking an inbound pass under the Blue Mountain basket with 2.0 seconds left, and while he missed the front end of the one-and-one, the Toppers had just 1 second left after collecting the ball and calling a timeout. A final desperation heave missed the mark, and The W had its first W of the season.

“Since Coach signed to come to this school, we’ve been waiting on this moment,” said Zeradjanin, who finished with 17 points on 7-of-9 shooting and 6 assists. “We’ve been working hard, and maybe it didn’t show the past nine games, but if we win or lose, we’re still working the same and trying to get better every day.”

“I felt really happy for my teammates because they’ve been through a lot with the COVID year and then the past nine games,” Thomas said. “I was more happy for my teammates, for the crowd, for the program. I was more happy for them to finally see a win against a good NAIA team.”

The Toppers fell to 7-4, losing for the first time in six games against the Owls. Brandon Williams led the Toppers with 19 points, with Donzo adding 17, Tejic chipping in 12 and Cole McGrath also in double figures with 11. 

Wright finished with 10 points and 8 rebounds for the Owls, tying Thomas for the team lead in the latter category. Zeradjanin’s 6 assists led the Owls, who shot a stellar 52.6 percent from the floor although they hit just 4 of 19 from 3-point range. 

The Owls held a 42-32 edge in points in the paint and a 33-30 advantage in rebounds.

“We didn’t turn the ball over as much; that’s the biggest thing,” Zeradjanin said. The Owls finished with 13 turnovers, just 3 during the second half.

Adding to the satisfaction of the first win was the fact it came against a team that had defeated the Owls 74-63 just five days earlier.

“I felt like this game when they made a run, we withstood it, came together and pulled together,” Thomas said. “We actually believed that we could make this run and pull out the game.”

“We took 16 more 3s than they did in that first game and made one more than they did,” Burrows said. “They made more free throws than we attempted, too.”

There was one downside to the win for Burrows, who is a firm believer in the team as a family unit.

“Right now what the problem is, we get a win, and we’ve still got guys who are a little down because of minutes or this or that, and it’s disappointing,” Burrows said. “It’s disheartening, but again, we’re trying to build something here, and it’s got to be about us.”

But the dominant feeling after the game was celebration and the need to take this win and build on it.

“We just needed to stick together and bring the energy and chemistry on the floor and take care of ourselves,” Zeradjanin said. “We don’t need to worry about what they do and what they don’t do, but if we do things the right way we can compete on a high level, and I think we can win ball games.”

The Owls have road games Saturday at Huntingdon, Sunday at Birmingham-Southern, Dec. 29 at Rhodes and Dec. 31 at Millsaps before their next game at Pohl Gym on Jan. 2 against Huntingdon. 

Said Thomas: “From this point forward we just have to build on everything, all the good things we did, just build from here.”