CLEVELAND, Miss. – Dedric Ware poured in a season-high 29 points but the Shorter Hawks fell victim to a cold shooting touch in the second half as the Delta State Statesmen emerged with a 79-74 Gulf South Conference win Monday night.

The loss snaps Shorter's three-game win streak and leaves the Hawks with an 11-5 overall record and a 6-4 GSC slate heading into Thursday night's home conference clash at the Winthrop-King Centre against Lee.

Against Delta State (10-6, 7-3) the Hawks found themselves trailing at the half 44-43 despite a solid performance over the opening 20 minutes of play by Ware, who hit nine of 15 shots from the floor – four of seven from beyond the three-point arc – to close out the first half with 22 points.

The Hawks, however, appeared to take control during the first 10 minutes of the second half when Tyler Alderman canned a three-pointer to give Shorter a 51-50 advantage with just over 15 minutes to play and from there the Hawks pushed their lead to eight when Jordan Jacks scored inside to give his team a 62-54 edge with 11:47 to go.

That's when Shorter went cold and Delta State made the most of it, putting together an 11-2 run to regain the lead, 65-64, with 7:10 remaining.

The Statesmen managed to make it a seven-point game, 75-68, with just over two minutes to go but saw the Hawks make one last charge when they scored five unanswered points to pull to within two points, 75-73 with 48 seconds left.

That, however, was as close as Shorter would get as the Statesmen held on for the decision.

Joining Ware in double figures was Jacks, who turned in his conference-leading eighth double-double of the season scoring 19 points and pulling down 11 rebounds.

Shorter, which entered the game hitting more than 51 percent of their shots a game, ended the night converting just 44 percent of their field goals and could only hit the mark on 12 of 30 attempts in the second half.

Delta State placed four players in double figures as Devin Schmidt led the Statesmen with 27 points, LaQuavius Cotton had 16, PJ Davis finished with 12 and Alister Chisholm had 11.