CONWAY, Arkansas – This time a week ago things looked bleak for the McNeese Cowboys to qualify for the Southland Conference postseason tournament. Afterall the Cowboys had just lost their fourth straight game and saw themselves on the outside of the eight-team tourney field looking in.
 
That's when 10^th-year head coach Dave Simmons challenged his team to treat the remaining three games as tournament games and how they could be the last of their season.
 
The result? Two crucial wins over Nicholls and Lamar, and late on Thursday night, the team learned it had notched its spot in the tourney.
 
Now the Cowboys will be playing for seeding when they take on Central Arkansas here Saturday afternoon to close out regular season play and four days before opening up at the league tournament next Wednesday.
 
Tip-off is scheduled for 4 p.m. and will follow a 2 o'clock game between the Cowgirls and the Sugar Bears.
 
"A loss in either one of those last two games just might have eliminated us," said Simmons. "We did what we had to do to win those games even though both came down to the final horn."
 
Against Nicholls last Saturday, freshman Jarren Greenwood hit his only 3-pointer of the game with 4.1 seconds to play in regulation to send the game into overtime. Then junior and team scoring leader Jamaya Burr knocked down a game-winning fall-away jumper in the lane with 2.3 seconds remaining in overtime to give the Cowboys a 71-69 win.
 
On Monday, Burr buried a well contested 3-point heave at the horn to end the first half to give his team a 3-point lead over Lamar while the Cardinals' last ditch effort to send the game into overtime was waved off after the game-tying trey left the hands of the shooting two-tenths of a second too late as the Cowboys prevailed 77-74.
 
McNeese (8-19, 6-11 SLC) will enter Saturday's game ranked sixth in the standings among the teams available to qualify for the tournament. A win over UCA (7-20, 6-11) will lock up the No. 6 seed while a loss could drop the Cowboys to the No. 8 spot depending on how Northwestern State, UNO and Nicholls all finish up.
 
Burr leads the team with a 15.2 scoring average while Greenwood (10.2) and James Harvey (10.0) follow. Craig McFerrin is ranked second in the league with 8.0 rebounds per game to go along with a 9.6 scoring average.
 
The Bear, who rallied from an 11-point second half deficit on Feb. 22 to beat McNeese 88-82, is led in scoring by Jordan Howard's 20.3 mark.
 
McNeese leads the all-time series 11-8 and beat UCA here in Conway 77-60 last season.