Box Score CEDAR CITY, Utah - The Southern Utah Thunderbirds (7-10, 1-5 Big Sky) fell to the Idaho Vandals 80-76 on Thursday night in front of 3,578 fans in the America First Event Center.
With just over 10 minutes to play, the Thunderbirds were down by 10. After some big baskets by Christian Musoko and Jamal Aytes, the T-Birds cut the lead to just three.
The Thunderbirds kept cutting into the lead, getting in down to just one after six straight points from James McGee with just over six minutes to play in the contest.
Neither team led by more than seven the rest of the game, but the Vandals stayed ahead the entire time eventually pulling out the victory.
"Their experience showed down the stretch as opposed to our inexperience playing together," SUU assistant coach John Wardenburg said. "We've got to get to that point."
SUU head coach Todd Simon was absent from the team on Thursday night dealing with a family matter.
McGee led the Thunderbird scoring effort with 17 points, finishing 5-of-5 from the field and 3-of-3 from behind the arc. Jamal Aytes and Brandon Better both finished with 12 points in the game.
"Credit to Idaho, they were picked first in our conference for a reason and they showed us tonight," McGee said. "They're just a good team, but I think we played a little passive in the beginning of the game, and then we started to realized we could get to the basket and start spraying shots and spraying passes, and once we did we showed we could play with them and it was a good game."
McGee is now just 12 points away from being the eighth all-time leading scorer in SUU men's basketball history.
Blake Brayon led the Vandal scoring effort with 23, finishing 9-of-16 from the field.
Southern Utah shot 44 percent from the field during the contest.
"I'd like to give our team's best to Todd and Kati (Simon) and their family, that was an emotional time for our guys," Wardenburg said. "And I'd like to thank the people that came out. It was a great crowd, I thought they were loud. Our marketing department did a great job and I hope the people keep coming."
Next up for the Thunderbirds will be a contest against Eastern Washington University on Saturday at 12:30 p.m.
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Read all about the Thunderbirds on www.suutbirds.com.
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.
