It wasn’t nearly as easy as the last time, but South Alabama finished off a season sweep of Southern Miss with a 73-70 victory on Wednesday night at the Mitchell Center.

Julian Margrave scored 18 points — all on 3-pointers — to lead the Jaguars, who also beat the Golden Eagles 83-64 in Hattiesburg last Thursday night. South Alabama has won four of five over Southern Miss the last two years, including a victory in the 2023 Sun Belt Conference tournament.

“I always count my lucky stars when we can string some wins together, because they they’ve been good,” South Alabama coach Richie Riley said. “Last year, they were unbelievable and we were fortunate enough to get them in the tournament. And then this year, they’ve got arguably the best backcourt in the league.

“… But yeah, we’ve had some success against them. It makes you happy as a coach when you can have some success against a really good program and show some consistency.”

The victory evened South Alabama’s overall record to 15-15, and improved its Sun Belt mark to 7-10. The Jaguars are now in a four-way tie for seventh place in the league standings headed into the regular-season finale Friday night vs. Louisiana Monroe.

Wednesday’s victory also went a long way toward keeping South Alabama out of the play-in round in the Sun Belt tournament, which begins Tuesday in Pensacola, Fla. The bottom four in the 14-team league must play on the tournament’s first day, with seeds 5-10 getting a bye until next Thursday and seeds 1-4 not playing until next Saturday’s quarterfinals.

“This was a huge win, especially going into the tournament,” South Alabama’s Samuel Tabe said. “We have one more game, but this win gives us a lot more momentum going into the tournament. We got this one today, and we’ve got to get that one on Friday as well.”

On Wednesday, it looked for a while like South Alabama might win going away again. The game was tied 36-36 at halftime, but the Jaguars made their first nine shots of the second half to build a 15-point lead at 59-44 with 14:39 to play.

Southern Miss, however, began to chip into the lead, despite losing leading scorer Austin Crowley — the Sun Belt preseason player of the year — with an ankle injury at the 11:38 mark. Crowley did not return and finished with 10 points, but guard Andre Curbelo picked up the slack with 25 points.

South Alabama’s Margrave was 6-for-10 on 3-pointers, making his first three of the first half and first two of the second half. Marcus Millender added eight points and seven assists for the Jaguars, who also had a 35-34 rebounding edge in the game.

Tabe, who scored 29 points in Hattiesburg last week, managed just 13 on Wednesday. He did hit a big jumper in the lane with 27 seconds left, putting the Jaguars up by four.

“It was great ball movement,” Tabe said. “I just trusted my teammates, and they just trusted me to take that shot. I remember last, last week against Arkansas State, I had a chance to tie it up and I missed it. I’ve just been thinking about that moment and I’ve been in the gym and praying for another moment like that. This time I made it.”

Southern Miss (16-14, 9-8) used a 19-2 run to take a 63-61 lead with 3:43 to play, but Millender drained a 3-pointer at the 3:27 mark to put the Jaguars back on top to stay. The Golden Eagles twice more cut the lead to one, but Judah Brown hit a 3-pointer the first time and Tyrell Jones made a pair of free throws the second to put the Jaguars up 73-70 with 14.9 seconds left.

Even then the game wasn’t over, though it mostly was after Curbelo was called for stepping on the sideline while attempting to launch a tying 3-pointer with 5.6 seconds left. Millender was fouled and missed the front end of a 1-and-1, but Southern Miss’ Victor Hart could not manage more than a desperation heave that fell far short as the final horn sounded.

“It certainly wasn’t pretty, but some sometimes wins aren’t pretty,” Riley said. “As coaches, we want them all to be a beautiful masterpiece at the end where you sit around and talk about how good you are as a coach, how polished your team is, but that’s not the case most of the time in hoops and it wasn’t tonight.

“We kind of made a mess of it late, turned the ball over. They started pressing us and we didn’t handle it very well. But our guys had the resolve and the toughness to finish it off.”

Tip-off for South Alabama-ULM on Friday is set for 7 p.m.