CEDAR CITY, Utah – The Southern Utah University women's basketball team will play its fourth-consecutive road game Tuesday when it travels to Northern Colorado, looking to go 5-0 in conference play.
GAME INFO
Southern Utah at Northern Colorado
Date: January 18, 2022
Tip-Off: 6:00 p.m. MT
Location: Greeley, Colo.
Venue: Bank of Colorado Arena
TV: ESPN+
Watch | Live Stats | Southern Utah Notes (PDF)
NOTES
-Southern Utah enters Tuesday's contest winners of four straight, and eight of its last nine.
-The Thunderbirds own a record of 3-4 against Northern Colorado under head coach Tracy Sanders.
-The last meeting between the two schools took place at last season's Big Sky Conference Tournament where the Bears defeated the T-Birds by a score of 63-59. The last time the two teams met in the regular season, SUU came out victorious, beating UNC, 70-63.
-Southern Utah boasts the top scoring offense in the Big Sky Conference with an average of 75.3 points per game.
-The Thunderbirds also rebound the ball better than anyone in the Big Sky at 43.5 boards per contest.
ABOUT NORTHERN COLORADO (4-6, 0-2 Big Sky)
-Northern Colorado enters Tuesday with a record of 4-6, and is still looking for its first conference win of the season. The Bears have not played since December 28 due to COVID-19 protocols.
-Hannah Simental leads Northern Colorado in scoring with 11.8 points per game. Kurstyn Harden is next in line with an average of 8.7 points per contest.
-Kristen Mattio is in her first season as head coach of the Bears. She spent the past six seasons as the head coach at West Texas A&M.
LAST TIME OUT
Behind 18 points from Cherita Daugherty and a 15-point, 10-rebound double-double from Darri Dotson, the Southern Utah University women's basketball team took down Northern Arizona, 70-61, Saturday afternoon at the Walkup Skydome to become the Big Sky Conference's only remaining unbeaten in league play.
Dotson and Lizzy Williamson both pulled down 10 rebounds apiece for the T-Birds, with Dotson securing six boards on the offensive end of the floor. Williamson finished the game with seven points to go with her rebounding efforts. In addition to her 18 points, Daugherty grabbed five rebounds of her own. Samantha Johnston matched Dotson with 15 points while knocking down three shots from 3-point range. Daylani Ballena was SUU's other scorer in double digits with 11 points for the afternoon.
The Thunderbirds took the lead on the very first possession of the game via a Williamson layup and never looked back. Later in the first quarter, NAU trimmed SUU's lead to one with the score 10-9, but that was as close as the Lumberjacks would get as Southern Utah led for the entirety of the contest. Northern Arizona appeared to be on the way to closing the gap late in the third quarter when it got back-to-back buckets to make it a two-point game, but an 8-0 run to end the period put SUU up 10 for the game's first double-digit lead.
SUU came out in the fourth quarter ready to protect its lead and never let the Lumberjacks make it closer than a six-point game. The T-Birds played tough defensively and answered every NAU bucket with one of their own to put the game on ice.
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