ROME, Ga. – With just less than 10 minutes left to play, the kind of run that is becoming a trademark of the season for the team kicked in.

Facing a visiting Valdosta State Blazers who refused to back down in the first 30 minutes of the game, the Shorter Hawks put together an explosive 19-3 run midway through the second half to go on and roll to a 99-87 Gulf South Conference win Thursday night at the Winthrop-King Centre.

The victory, their third straight and sixth in the last seven outings, kept the Hawks in a tie for the top spot in the GSC standings and improves Shorter to 15-5 overall and 10-4 in the GSC heading into another conference test Saturday on their home court against West Florida.

Against Valdosta (9-11, 4-10), the Hawks broke out to as much as a nine-point lead, with Tyler Alderman leading the way by scoring all 13 points in the opening 20 minutes. The Blazers, however, came up with a late surge in the closing minutes of the first half and trailed by one going into the halftime, 48-47.

The visitors carried over the momentum in the second half as VSU grabbed a 63-58 advantage with 13:42 left to play with Shaun Jones converted a three-point play.

But that's when the Hawks slowly began to chip away at the deficit and with 10:45 remaining, Matt Catanzano began the game-changing run hitting a pair of free throws, followed that with two charity tosses and with 9:05 to go tipped in a missed shot that gave Shorter a 73-67 lead.

Travis Jones continued the surge for the Hawks with a layup and Dedric Ware capped the run connecting on four straight foul shots and hit an off-balanced shot in the lane that gave Shorter its biggest lead of the night, 84-70, with 5:48 left in the game.

The Blazers would never recover.

Ware ended the game leading all scorers with 26 points – 19 of those coming in the second half where he was perfect on all 10 free throws – and dished out seven assists while Jones had 17 points, handed out seven assists and despite starting at point guard had eight rebounds.

In addition to Alderman's 13 points, Catanzano turned in his best outing of the season coming off the bench to score 12 points and pull down eight rebounds, and Kordario Fleming added 11 points.

Shorter left the court hitting 52 of their shots from the floor and dominated the game under the boards where they out-rebounded the Blazers 51-36.

Jones and Blake Justice led VSU with 15 points each, James Spencer and Jeff Nibo both finished with 14 and Colin Cook added 12.