CEDAR CITY, Utah -- The Thunderbird men's basketball team picked up their fourth straight victory on Saturday afternoon inside the America First Event Center, knocking off the Sacramento State Hornets 76-71.

The victory moves the Thunderbirds to 9-7 on the season and 4-3 in the Big Sky Conference. The Hornets fell to 7-8 on the year and 1-5 in league play.

Southern Utah started extremely hot, as they jumped out to a 16-3 lead thanks to a 16-0 run following a Hornet triple to start the contest. As the half wore on the T-Birds built their lead to as many as 25, and took a 41-18 advantage into the halftime break.

SUU shot 63 percent from the field in the first 20 minutes.

With 13:55 to play in the contest the T-Birds had built their biggest lead of the contest, sitting ahead of the Hornets by 28 points. However, as the half wore on the Hornets chipped away at the lead and got closer and closer to making it a contest.

The Hornets pushed the Thunderbird lead all the way down to three with 50 seconds to play, but the T-Birds made the right plays down the stretch to secure the five-point victory 76-71. The Hornets had 24 points off of SUU's turnovers in the second half, which forced a tight contest down the stretch.  

"Obviously we played 30 great minutes, and 10 very bad minutes," SUU head coach Todd Simon said following the contest. "We kind of stopped being aggressive. I thought there was chances we could of attacked and we didn't, and the turnovers against the press were not great, but we did a lot of good stuff in the first 30 minutes in terms of defensively really holding them down, and when you're plus 19 on the glass and shoot 96 from the free throw line you're going to give yourself a chance to win."  

Cameron Oluyitan led the scoring effort for the Thunderbirds on Saturday, finishing with 21 points in 38 minutes of play. Andre Adams was second on the team in scoring with 17, and led the team's rebounding effort with nine. The pair combined to go 11-of-11 from the free throw line, and the team as a whole was 24-of-25 from the charity stripe.

Jacob Calloway finished with 15 points, and Brandon Better dropped 12 to round out the T-Birds in double-digits.

The Hornets were led by Marcus Graves, who finished with 24 points on 7-of-18 shooting.

The T-Birds will be back in action on January 24 when they'll take on the Northern Colorado Bears in Greeley, Colorado. That contest will tip off at 7 p.m. MT.

Follow the Thunderbirds all season @SUUBasketball on Twitter and Instagram and by liking the Southern Utah Basketball page on Facebook.

Read all about the Thunderbirds on www.suutbirds.com.

Individual game tickets for the 2018-19 Season are available at www.tbirdtickets.com or at the America First Event Center Ticket Office.