Troy was one of the last teams to take the court in the 2024 Sun Belt Conference men’s basketball tournament, but the Trojans’ stay in Pensacola, Fla., won’t be a long one.

The third-seeded Trojans lost 74-68 to No. 11 Texas State on Saturday night at Pensacola Bay Center, ending their tournament run after just one game. Troy (20-12) had a double-bye as one of the league’s top 4 seeds, while Texas State (17-17) won for the third time in five days and advances to Sunday’s semifinals vs. the winner of Saturday’s late game between James Madison and Marshall.

“Credit to Texas State — they finished plays, they made shots against us,” Troy coach Scott Cross said. “It was a very, very physical game, one of the most-physical games I’ve been a part of. We didn’t finish as many plays. We had a lot of open opportunities getting to the basket and we didn’t finish them.”

Troy had two Sun Belt individual award winners and placed one player on the all-conference first-team this season, but Texas State guard Jordan Mason was the best player on the court Saturday. He scored 25 points on 9-for-11 shooting, hit all three of his 3-point attempts and was also 4-for-4 at the free-throw line.

As a team, Texas State shot 56% from the field, made 7 of 14 3-point attempts and went 17-for-20 at the free-throw line. The Bobcats also had 13 steals.

“Players did their jobs; that’s a tough team,” Texas State coach Terrence Johnson said. “We battled them on the glass, but they definitely got to us a little bit. But for the most part, when you can shoot 50% from the 3-point line and 50% from the field, 85 from the free-throw line, it shows that you’re locked in.”

Troy led just twice in the second half, at 41-40 with 14:30 to play and then at 49-48 after a Tayton Conerway 3-pointer with 8:51 left. But Texas State’s Coleton Benson answered with a 3 of his own to start a 9-0 Bobcats run that swung the game away from the Trojans.

Troy won the rebounding battle 29-25, but was undone by 20 turnovers that led to 27 Texas State points. The Trojans also missed 9 of 22 free throws, going 3-for-9 from the 11:58 mark of the second half to 5:14 remaining.

Troy played the entire second half without Sun Belt Freshman of the Year Myles Rigsby, who suffered an apparent concussion when he hit his head of the floor with 6:39 left in the first half. Rigsby — who averaged 11.6 points per game during the regular season — played just 11 minutes on Saturday and scored only three points.

“Myles is probably our most physical finisher,” Cross said. “He’s a guy that really can get the ball to the basket and finish through contact. This is a game you have to finish through contact. It was a big loss, but we had enough guys to still get the job done.

“… , I haven’t seen it on film yet, but they said maybe he caught an elbow and then his head landed on the floor, I think is what happened. I think he’s got a concussion.”

Texas State led 33-30 after a back-and-forth first half that included one pushing and shoving incident after a Jackson Fields dunk at the 7:03 mark. Troy’s Marcus Rigsby (Myles’ older brother) and Texas State’s Joshua O’Garro were at the center of the scuffling, and both were assessed technical fouls.

Troy reserve forward Randi Ovalle was ejected for leaving the bench area to join the fracas. Ovalle, who averages a little more than five minutes per game for the Trojans, made it nearly to midcourt before being corralled by a Trojans assistant coach.

“That altercation, that is part of basketball,” Johnson said. “There’s not a player on this team that hadn’t had altercations like that. At the end of the day, we didn’t come here to box, we came here to fight, and that’s what we did. We fought today. They woke us up and I appreciate that, but it’s part of the game.”

Conerway, the Sun Belt Sixth Man of the Year this season, led Troy with 16 points and five assists off the bench. Senior Aamer Muhammad scored 14, while All-Sun Belt senior Christyon Eugene was held to 10 on 2-for-8 shooting.

Davion Sykes added 13 points for Texas State, while O’Garro had 11. No player on either team had more than five rebounds.

Texas State has now won two of three meetings vs. Troy this season, including an 82-79 overtime victory in San Marcos, Texas, on March 1. Troy won the first meeting between the two teams, 78-65 on Jan. 24 at Trojan Arena.

“We just kind of took the momentum from that game and just the confidence,” Mason said. “We came in with good confidence, knowing that we’d already beat them and that we could do it again.”

Texas State came into the tournament with a 14-17 overall record, but beat No. 14 Old Dominion 92-83 in overtime in Tuesday’s play-in round and then knocked off No. 6 Southern Miss 75-59 on Thursday night. Troy, however, had not played since its regular-season finale at Louisiana on March 28.

Cross didn’t blame the 8-day layoff for his team’s slipshod play on Saturday, though his team is not the first to lose its first game after entering the tournament with a double-bye (the Troy women suffered a similar fate on Friday night). However, Saturday’s loss did put a damper on a third straight 20-win season, a first for the Trojans since the early 1990s.

“We’ve had a phenomenal season winning 20 games,” Cross said. “It’s a disappointment, because everybody’s goal at the beginning of the season is to go to the NCAA tournament and we came up short. I felt like this team was a team that was good enough to go to the NCAA tournament. But credit to Texas State, they got the job done.”