CEDAR CITY — Junior Sarah Hutton led four Thunderbird starters in double figures with a career-high 19 points as Southern Utah's women's basketball team scored the game's first 11 points, but needed to score the game's final 11 points to hold off and defeat Texas-San Antonio, 82-73, Tuesday night. SUU has won three-straight to improve to 6-2 on the season, while UTSA dropped to 2-5.
The Thunderbirds used their early run to rush out to a 21-8 lead, but the Roadrunners fought back behind Nikki Hendrix, who poured in 11 of her team's next 15 points to pull UTSA to within four at 27-23 with 8:40 to play until intermission. However, SUU would get balanced scoring from its starters to push the lead back to 13 before settling for a 42-34 advantage at the half.
UTSA turned up the pressure to start the second half, instituting a full-court press coupled with 11 points from Dewella Holliday to rally with a 20-10 spurt and claim its first lead of the game at 54-52 with 12:09 left to play. The Roadrunners would increase that lead to as many as five points at 69-64 with 4:42 to go, but SUU hung tough and would eventually pull even with UTSA at 73-73 after two Lacey Yates free throws started the decisive run with 2 minutes on the clock. The T-Bird defense then turned up its own pressure by forcing four turnovers which led to four steals, including a big steal and three-point conversion by senior Cyrita Warner, and got a key shot block by junior Katy Cooke with 27 seconds to play with SUU clinging to a 76-73 lead. UTSA was forced to foul and Southern Utah converted on all six free throw attempts to close out the game.
The Thunderbirds continue their pre-Christmas homestand Friday against Eastern Washington at 7:05 p.m. (MST), at the Centrum Arena.