ST. JOSEPH, Mo. - Men's Basketball earned their first win in St. Joseph, Missouri with a 70-66 win in the Missouri Western State University Fieldhouse behind Stevie Strong's 23 points and game winning floater with 2 seconds left to earn the season sweep over the Griffons.

The Jets led the entire first half, getting out to as much as a 9 point lead before the Griffons cut away into it late in the half to give Newman a 2 point lead at 34-32.

Missouri Western would gain its first lead 2 minutes into the 2nd half, using a 7-0 run to put the Jets in scramble mode after being in control for most of the game leading up to that point. Newman returned the favor with a 6-2 run to take the lead back at 41-39.

The men in navy blue wouldn't lose the read the rest of the way.

Newman marched into MWSU Fieldhouse to disrupt a Griffon team who needed to win 2 out of their last 3 games to get into the MIAA postseason tournament. Although the Jets were eliminated last week, that didn't stop the MIAA leading scorer Stevie Strong from leading his team to a convincing win in front of 1,113 fans in attendance. The sophomore star finished the game with 23 points with his biggest coming in the final moments of the game.

Missouri Western tied the game with 27 seconds left. Jaron Thames made his first free throw and missed the 2nd but Taye Fields grabbed the rebound and assisted it to Ethan Killgore who made the wide open layup to make it a 66-66 game.

The Jets, undeterred, calmly brought the ball up the floor and with just under 10 seconds left Stevie Strong dribbled past the man guarding him and threw up a 10 foot floater that was nothing but net to silence the the home crowd. MWSU tried to inbound the pass but Stevie got a hand on the ball which knocked it off a Missouri Western player to give Newman possession with 1.2 seconds left. Sam Somerhalder would sink both free throws to put a damper on the Griffon's Wednesday night plans and put a smile on the men in navy on their way back to Wichita.

Strong finished with 23 points. Latik Murphy finished with 13 in the win. Ian Lee and Somerhalder finished with 8 a piece. Thomas Zevgaras owned the post with his 8 points off 3-5 shooting.

Newman outscored the Griffons 14-4 in fast break points and scored 6 more points off turnovers (17-11). The Jets shot 41.5% from the field.

The Jets are heading in the right direction as a program. They're 1 win away from reaching the 10 win mark for the first time since 2018-2019, and have earned 2 more conference wins than a season ago.

Newman heads back to Wichita and will look to score a major upset in their final game of the season when they take on No. 7/12 Central Oklahoma on senior day this Saturday at 3:30 PM.