Despite its poor record and extended losing streak, N.C. Wesleyan men’s basketball coach John Thompson never expected Shenandoah to go away Tuesday night.

He probably didn’t expect the No. 7 Hornets to go away from Everett Gymnasium with a 72-68 upset victory in the first round of the USA South Conference Tournament, though.

“We knew they’d come to play, and no matter what the score was, they’d continue to fight,” Thompson said. “They did that.”

The Bishops battled back with less than five minutes to play as Domarius Thomas scored twice inside, and point guard Cornelius Snow stood at the free-throw line with his arms extended in celebration.

In just a few minutes, Snow would extend his arms again, more out of desperation than celebration.

With the Bishops down by three with one minute to play, Justin Griffith knocked down a 25-footer to tie the game. He hit another deep shot with 20.6 remaining. The second one didn’t give the Bishops the lead. Instead, it just trimmed the deficit to one point.

“I felt like we let down,” senior Domarius Thomas said. “We let them stay in the game. We gave them a lot of confidence.”

Shenandoah’s Avery Green missed his second free throw with 17.6 seconds to play and gave N.C. Wesleyan a chance to make up for 39 minutes of a lacking focus and a killer instinct. But this time, after N.C. Wesleyan had failed to show aggressiveness in putting Shenandoah away, the Bishops were overaggressive.

Bishops point guard Devin Nichols was called for an offensive charge, and N.C. Wesleyan’s season was all but finished. After a pair of made free throws – while Snow pleaded with the crowd for more noise – it was finished.

“I don’t know what happened, but we clearly didn’t play with a great deal of focus,” Thompson said.

Down to the very last shot, No. 2 N.C. Wesleyan (15-10) did everything it could to put Shenandoah away (5-21).

Even if it went in, Snow’s last-second shots wouldn’t have won the N.C. Wesleyan the game.

“It was more our guys saying this could potentially be the last game of the season,” Shenandoah coach Rob Pryor said. “We’ve been very close a few games in this losing streak. It was time for them to get over the hump.”

No. 2-seeded N.C. Wesleyan opened the game with a quick five points in 93 seconds but had a much harder time from there. The Bishops, who had won five straight games to end the season and hadn’t lost to Shenandoah since 2009, fell behind by 11 points as Shenandoah opened the game up with a 13-1 run.

There are plenty of ways to put a team away. and not all of them require a big lead. One is closing a big lead. N.C. Wesleyan did that after closing the 11-point gap to take the lead with 2:21 remaining in the first half. Shenandoah stuck around and led by two points at halftime.

N.C. Wesleyan tried again by opening the second half with eight unanswered points in just four minutes. It was another attempt to put the Hornets away and another failure.

“We just played a tight game with them,” Thomas said. “If we had opened the game up, we would have given them no chance, and we would have pulled out the victory. It’s hard to lose (Tuesday) as the No. 2 seed.”

After failing to stop Shenandoah by erasing a big lead and opening a big lead of their own, the Bishops had one last chance to pull away.

They had to hit big shots of their own, and they did that, too.

But after Griffith made his two shots and the Hornets stuck around, the game was no longer about putting Shenandoah away. It was about N.C. Wesleyan trying to avoid the upset, which it couldn’t do.

“We weren’t always able to continue to execute our stuff through the good times and the bad the way they did,” Thompson said.

N.C. Wesleyan 72
Shenandoah 68
SHEN        37    35    –    72
NCWC      35    33    –    68
SHEN: Avery Green 20; George Williams 10; Ross Heyl 9; Dominic Chappell 8; Bryce Mitchell 6; Justin Long 6; Xavier Alston 5; Matthew Thompson 4; James Bowens 4.NCWC: Domarius Thomas 19; Alex Murray 13; Justin Griffith 11; Matt Dougherty 10; Cornelius Snow 5; Julian Martin 5; Devin Nichols 3; Ric Yarbrough 2.

Justin Hite can be reached at 407-9951 or jhite@rmtelegram.com.