By Robert Wilson
Southern Miss junior guard and Southwest Mississippi Community College transfer Tylik “Bully” Weeks is putting on a show this week at the Sun Belt Conference men’s basketball tournament at the Pensacola Bay Center.
Weeks scored a game-high 28 points to lead No. 8 seed Southern Miss to its third straight tournament victory with an 86-73 victory over No. 4 seed Appalachian State Saturday in the fourth round.
It was Weeks’ third straight big game with games of 31 points in Wednesday night’s win over No. 9 seed James Madison and 32 points in Thursday night’s win over No. 5 seed Texas State. He is four points shy of breaking the Sun Belt Tournament scoring record. The record is 95 points by Tristan Thomas of North Texas during the 2011 conference tournament. Weeks performance against James Madison was the most points by a Southern Miss player in a men’s basketball conference tournament in 64 years since Nick Devon scored 35 points in 1962.
Southern Miss improved to 19-15 and meets No. 1 seed and Sun Belt regular season champion Troy Sunday at 5 p.m. in the semifinals (on ESPN plus). Southern Miss and Troy split the two game regular season series.
The Golden Eagles have won seven of their last nine games since the return of starter Isaac Traveras after sitting out 12 games with a broken hand.
It’s the first time Southern Miss has advanced to a semifinal game in a conference tournament since the 2019 Conference USA tournament.
Weeks, from Brooklyn, New York, led the way again, especially from the free throw line. He made seven of eight free throw attempts and has made 34 of 37 (91.9 percent) in the three tournament games. Weeks has set a school record for most free throws in a season and is shooting 82.6 percent from the line.
Weeks – who gets his nickname from the style of basketball he plays – was named first team All Sun Belt Conference earlier this week.
“If you look from at where he came from, the neighborhood he grew up in, for some crazy reason he ends up in Summit, Mississippi (at Southwest Mississippi Community College),” Ladner said. “We were the first school to offer him a scholarship. I loved him the first time I saw him play. I offered him that very day. This is a guy that fits what we are looking for. He’s got kind of an old school game. He plays in the mid-range and the analytics say that not the way to play. He’s deadly at the foul line. He’s a winner. When we get him the ball, he’s going to deliver. He continues to do it over and over. He personafites what our school talks about grit. We say great resides in toughness – GRIT – and Bully personifies that.
In addition to Weeks, Izzy Hart and Dylan Brumfield had 16 points and nine rebounds each for Southern Miss.
”I’m proud of the fight our guys had. We aren’t always the prettiest group as far as executing, but our guys have a lot of pride, toughness and competitive spirit and that’s been carrying us,” said Ladner, who is having his second best season in his six years at Southern Miss (he won 25 games in the 2022-2023 season when led the Golden Eagles to the Sun Belt regular season title and an NIT appearance).
One of those important players who fought hard when he was on the floor is 7-foot graduate student Tegra Izay, a Montreal, Canada native who has been at Southern Miss for three seasons.
Izay had 6 points, 9 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 blocked shots in 23 minutes and made many big plays coming off the bench.
“Teg is someone who is very special to me,” Ladner said. “He has been there for three years and been through some tough times. He has been through a tough (knee) injury, really hurt our team last year in the second or third game of the season and was out for the year. He is so valuable than more than just what he does out on the floor, First of all, he is playing the best basketball of his career. He plays with incredible spirit, he’s tough, he’s smart, one of the most intelligent players that we have, basketball IQ and just general intelligence. He understands. He is a leader and he’s a man of few words. When I was growing up, there was a commercial for E.F. Hutton and when E.F. spoke, everybody listened. That’s who he is. He doesn’t say a lot, but when he says something, he has the room’s attention. I love him. He has been through some tough times and he’s getting to experience the fruits of his hard work.”
“With the injury I had last year, it was a great setback for me, but it allowed me to grow as a leader, as a basketball player, I learned so much and I got closer to God,” Tegra said. “Everything got better in my life. There was a point in time in the summer that I wanted to leave, but Coach and I had a conversation and we talked it out. He has been loyal to me and I showed my loyalty back to him. I told him I was coming back and we were going to make a run. This is my revenge tour and I’m making the most out of it.”
Ladner emphasized that God has a plan for his team and why all these players from around the country are playing together at Southern Miss.
“What is really neat is that God put us all together,” Ladner said. “There is no way you could have figured all the guys were going to be here together. God has put us together for some kind of reason. We are all men of faith. We trust in God. God expects us to be stewards of his talents and we want to give Him glorification by the way we carry ourselves on and off the floor and by the way we play.”
Ladner’s team has grown and come together more and more during the season.
As the season has progressed, we have grown up and matured,” Ladner said. “When something bad happened to us, we would let that turn into more and more mistakes earlier in the year. Mature players and winners don’t do that. We call it stone facing. No matter what happens, go to the next play and stay the course. We are not always perfect, but we are so much further along, even three weeks ago. We have shown a lot of characteristics of winners. We haven’t let the pressure of the moment not let us get to the next play.”
