Kansas City, Mo.  – The 22^nd-ranked Missouri Southern men's basketball team started strong and kept its foot on the gas as the Lions took out Northeastern State 96-60 tonight in the quarterfinals of the 2020 MIAA Tournament inside historic Municipal Auditorium.
 
Southern (22-7) had big nights from Cam Martin and Elyjah Clark as Martin scored 24, added five assists and nine boards, while Clark scored 20 and went 5-of-9 from long-range. Kinzer Lambert scored 17 points and pulled down eight rebounds.
 
Elyjah Clark now has 360 three pointers in his career, just 10 from tying the MIAA record. Clark also moved into 4th-place on the all-time scoring list at MSSU and has 1,775 points in his career, passing John Thomas.
 
Martin becomes the only Lion to ever score 700 points twice in a single season as he has 703 on the year and 1,423 in his career pushing him past Matt Olson for 10^th-place on the MSSU all-time scoring list.
 
NSU (18-11) was led by 21 points from Kendrick Thompson.
 
Southern started strong as the Lions opened up an 11-6 lead with 17:26 left in the first half when Lambert hit a three off an assist from Parker Jennings. A three from Clark with 13:41 left made the score 19-10, Lions, while a three from Lambert, this one with nine on the clock pushed the Southern lead to 26-14.
 
A dunk from Martin with 4:18 left made the score 39-22, while a layup from Martin with 1:13 to go, gave the Lions a 20-point lead (46-26). A dunk from Lambert off an assist from Martin with 30 seconds to go proved to be the final points of the half and gave the Lions a 48-29 lead going into the locker room.
 
A three from Clark with 17:04 to go in the 2^nd half pushed the Southern lead to 21 (56-36), while a three from Lambert with 13:44 on the clock made the score 64-44. A three from Jennings with just under ten minutes pushed the lead to 23 (72-49), and the Southern lead reached 30 (83-53) after a jumper from Tharp with 5:36 to go.
 
An alley-oop dunk from Stan Scott from Reggie Tharp put the score at 86-65 with 4:23 to go and a pair of three's from Christian Bundy, sandwiched around a layup from Bundy provided the final points.
 
The Lions out rebounded NSU 46-35 and Southern shot 50 percent from the field in the game. Southern had a 40-28 advantage in the paint and the Lions' bench out scored NSU 24-16.
 
Southern now moves on to the semifinals where the No. 3 seeded Lions will take on the No. 2 seed Rogers State tomorrow night at 8:15 pm.