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William Lee hit a trio of threes early for UAB (courtesy UAB athletics communications)

(Jimmy Mitchell)

It took two overtimes, but UAB escaped Hattiesburg, Miss., with an 80-77 win over Southern Miss.

UAB withstood a barrage of Southern Miss threes, as the Golden Eagles hit 16 in the game - 10 in the second half - but none in the second overtime.

"It was another storm followed by a hurricane followed by a tornado followed by a tsunami," UAB head coach Jerod Haase said on postgame radio. "Sometimes I wonder if we have a pulse because there was no panic.

"To be able to come back, forget and have a short memory is a good thing for our team."

UAB and Southern Miss were tied 73-all going into the second overtime, but UAB quickly scored on a William Lee jumper and never trailed. Hakeem Baxter hit 1-of-2 free throws with 13 seconds left after getting a defensive stop.

UAB (21-4, 11-1 Conference USA) has now won 18 of its last 19 games. Southern Miss dropped to 7-15, 4-7. The Blazers remained in first place in Conference USA and are now two games ahead of Middle Tennessee and Marshall after MT lost 73-63 at Louisiana Tech on Thursday.

Southern Miss led by six with seven minutes to go, but UAB clawed its way back in and tied it on a dunk by Chris Cokley with a minute left. UAB had the final shot in regulation, but Robert Brown's jumper missed.

Nick Norton's lay-up tied the game at 73 with six seconds left in the first overtime and UAB got a stop to force double overtime.

UAB led 37-30 at half, but Southern Miss was on fire from behind the arc in the second half, hitting 10 3-pointers.

Cokley led UAB with 17 points and 13 rebounds. Lee scored 15, Norton 14 and Robert Brown 13. Kourtlin Jackson led Southern Miss with 18 points.

UAB outrebounded Southern Miss 41-33.

"We had a few guys play a lot of minutes, five guys over 30 minutes and for us that's unusual," Haase said. "The one thing you worry about at this point of the year is being in shape. I was encouraged to see our guys fight through it for the most part and our guys got it done at the end."

Haase praised Norton's clutch play at the end.

"He has the ability to do a lot of different things," Haase said. "He seems to find a way every single time to make the winning plays."

UAB is at Louisiana Tech on Saturday at 1 p.m. FSN will televise the game.