CHENEY, Wash. -- The Southern Utah men's basketball team fell on the road against Eastern Washington on Thursday night 74-51. The Thunderbirds have just one regular season game remaining before heading to Reno, Nevada for the Big Sky Conference Tournament.

"They made a bunch of threes and we were really cold shooting tonight and that's a bad combination," SUU head coach Todd Simon said.

The Thunderbirds are now 11-17 overall, and 5-12 in the Big Sky Conference.

It was all Eagles early in the contest, as they jumped out to a 15-4 lead over the Thunderbirds. As the minutes ticked on, the Eagles were able to up their lead to 26-6 with 10:25 to play in the opening half.

At that point the Thunderbirds went on a 6-0 run, but the Eagles responded with a 13-0 run of their own to continue to stay well ahead of the T-Birds.

The Eagles led 44-22 at the break after SUU closed on another 6-0 run. Jamal Aytes had nine points at the half for SUU, while Bogdan Bliznyuk had 24 in the opening 20 minutes for the Eagles.  

The Eagles maintained their lead throughout the second half, but the Thunderbirds played a much closer final 20 minutes only getting out scored by one, 30-29.

"We couldn't get it all back on one possession, we had to chop it down and try to play basketball possession by possession," Simon said. "Our focus was to work on stuff we wanted to work on and let the score be what it was when the game ended."

Ultimately, the Eagles pulled away 74-51.

Aytes was the leading scorer for the Thunderbirds, finishing with 15 and shooting 6-of-7 from the field.

"We had an advantage inside and we need to do a better job of getting him more touches when he gets going," Simon said about Aytes performance.

Dwayne Morgan and Jadon Cohee both finished with eight for the Thunderbirds.

Jordan Lyons scored his first career field goal for the Thunderbirds, finishing with a career high four points and four rebounds in just six minutes of play.

Bliznyuk was the story for the Eagles, securing a double-double with 32 points and 15 rebounds. He also had five assists in 37 minutes. The senior Eagle moved into third all-time on the Big Sky scoring list.

Southern Utah will wrap up their regular season in Moscow, Idaho on Saturday as they face off against the University of Idaho Vandals. The game will tip off at 8 p.m. MT.

"We're going to have to make shots," Simon said looking forward. "We're going to have to share the ball to create better shots and we can't let our offense affect our defense. We'll have to guard, be more physical and step up the intensity on that end of the floor."

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