CEDAR CITY, Utah -- The Thunderbird men's basketball team moved to 3-1 on the season and 2-0 in Big Sky Conference play on Saturday afternoon inside the America First Event Center, as they completed a sweep of the Montana Grizzlies 75-74 in another close contest.
The game once again came down to the final possession, as the score was knotted at 74-74 with 11 seconds to play. Tevian Jones brought the ball down the floor and missed a three-point attempt, but Nick Fleming was able to secure the offensive rebound and was fouled on the putback attempt which sent him to the freethrow line.
Fleming hit the first, and intentionally missed the second making life hard on the Griz who were not able to convert on a heave, giving the T-Birds back-to-back victories.
"As a program, as you build the thing, you go from some lows, and then you start to hope to win, then you want to win, then now we're at a stage with our program where we're expecting to win," SUU head coach Todd Simon said. "That's what great teams do, they believe. We never really felt rattled, stuff wasn't going our way and we weren't playing a good brand of basketball there for those middle 15 minutes, but we didn't get rattled."
After going into the calendar year not beating Montana since the year 2000, the Thunderbirds have topped the Griz three times in 2020.
Southern Utah started out the game hot, and built up a nine point lead at 23-14 with 11:02 on the clock.
The Grizzlies closed out the first half on a 13-0 run to take a 36-31 lead into the halftime break. The Thunderbirds didn't score for the final 5:33 of the opening 20 minutes.
Montana shot 57 percent in the first half, while the T-Birds made just 38 percent of their field goals.
As the second half started the Thunderbirds were able to embark on a 12-0 run to cut the Griz lead to one at 46-45 with 14:21 to play. Unfortunately for SUU, Montana responded with a 7-0 run of their own after that point, and quickly regained a comfortable lead.
Over the final 10 minutes the Thunderbirds scraped and clawed to stay in the game, and completed the comeback with 40 seconds to play as Dre Marin hit a jumper to give SUU a 72-71 advantage. That jumper set the table for the T-Birds to go up three with 20 seconds to go, and led into the final minutes of action that culminated with Fleming sealing the contest.
Marin and Jones tied for the team lead in total points, both dropping 19. Marin nearly had a double-double, securing a career-high eight rebounds from the guard position, along with snagging three steals. Jones had 15 of his 19 points in the second half.
Saturday marked Marin's 100th contest in a Thunderbird uniform.
Like Marin, Maizen Fausett also nearly walked away with a double-double, scoring 16 points and pulling down eight rebounds. Both we're season highs for the Utah native.
With two blocks in the contest, Ivan Madunic is now third all-time in the Southern Utah Record Book with 88 career blocks passing Kenyatta Clyde (87).
Kyle Owens had a big game for the Griz, scoring 21 points on 9-of-14 shooting.
Southern Utah held a 15-3 advantage in second chance points on Saturday, giving them a massive boost.
The T-Birds were able to win despite only shooting 43 percent from the field, compared to Montana's 51. This was done in large part to knocking down 10 shots from behind the three-point line.
Moving their attention back to the non-conference slate, the Thunderbirds will return to the court next Wednesday in Orem to take on in-state rival Utah Valley University.
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