Box Score CEDAR CITY, Utah -- The Thunderbird men's basketball team picked up their first Big Sky Conference victory of the season on Saturday inside the America First Event Center, as they knocked off rival Northern Arizona 81-75.
"Obviously this is a big win for us getting momentum swinging in the right direction," SUU head coach Todd Simon said.
Brandon Better started things off with a triple, followed by a Dwayne Morgan layup after an NAU layup. After Jadon Cohee added another triple on the following possession, the T-Birds jumped ahead 8-2. The Lumberjacks called timeout at the 17 minute mark when the T-Birds pushed the lead to 12-4.
"My teammates started stepping up and hitting shots, and I just played the assist role, tried to get some assists and wait for my time to come again," Better said about his mindset after hitting the opening shot.
After a quick 5-0 run from NAU Cohee hit another triple to slow down the Lumberjacks to make the score 15-9.
After the first media timeout, the two teams went back-and-forth scoring the ball. With 7:36 to play in the opening frame the Thunderbirds led 27-20.
As the half went on, the Lumberjacks pulled closer and closer and cut the T-Bird lead to two at the final media timeout of the first half thanks to 11 straight points by Geno Littles.
The Thunderbirds led 38-36 at the break.
The second half was incredibly close as neither team had a lead higher than six until the 7:34 mark when Jacob Calloway hit a triple to put the Thunderbirds on top 62-55. The Thunderbirds upped their lead to nine with six and a half minutes to play.
Southern Utah stayed ahead of Northern Arizona for the remainder of the contest, and pulled away with a 81-75 victory.
Better led the Thunderbirds with 19 points. Cohee dropped in 18 and Morgan finished with 14. Morgan also led the Thunderbirds in rebounding with nine.
"We just had to get the monkey off our back," Cohee said. "That was a lot of losses in a row, and it feels great to win and now we've got two really tough games next week so we need to build off that for sure."
The Thunderbirds shot 51.8 percent for the contest, while the Lumberjacks shot 39.7 percent.
Karl Harris led the Lumberjacks with 19 points.
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Single game tickets for the 2017-18 SUU men's basketball campaign can be purchased at tbirdtickets.com or at the America First Event Center Ticket Office.
