Marin’s Go-Ahead Basket Lifts SUU To Win Over Northern Arizona

CEDAR CITY, Utah – Dre Marin scored 11 of his 13 points in the second half including the go-ahead jumper to give the Southern Utah Thunderbirds an 84-82 win over the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks.

Cameron Oluyitan led the way for SUU with 18 points and 5 rebounds, while Jacob Calloway added 17 points, including 3-for-4 from the three-point line.

Andre Bernie and Ted McCree led the Lumberjacks with 19 points apiece.

Even First Half

Southern Utah led early in the first half 21-11 with 11 minutes left when Northern Arizona cut the lead to 5 with 10 minutes left.

The Thunderbirds bumped the lead back to eight but the Lumberjacks would keep chipping away at the lead and eventually trailed by one point with 7 minutes left in the first half.

Northern Arizona tied the game with 3:23 left but Southern Utah made one more basket down the stretch of the first half to lead 42-40 going into the locker room.

Marin Has Big Second Half

NAU was down 71-59 before the Lumberjacks went on an 11-2 run to crawl all the way back to trail 73-70 with 5 minutes left in the game.

But the run reached 15-2 and Northern Arizona had the lead back, 74-73 with 3:27 left.

Southern Utah tied the game at 75 with a layup by Andre Adams with under two minutes left, they have struggled recently shooting the ball, hitting just one of their last eight field goal attempts as a team.

Adams nailed one of his two free-throws to take a one point lead with 1:48 left. The Lumberjacks tied the game when Andre hit just one of his two attempts at the free-throw line with just 1:14 left in the game.

With 37 seconds left, the Thunderbirds trailed by two point after NAU’s Brooks Debisschop hit his first two points of the game at the free-throw line. Dre Marin hit a big three-pointer to give Southern Utah the lead back at 79-78.

NAU made a layup to lead 80-79 with 24 seconds left before Marin came up with a big layup while getting fouled. He put the free-throw away to put SUU back on top 82-80 with 17 seconds left in the game.

After the Thunderbirds called a timeout, Debisschop made a layup to tie the game at 82 with 10 seconds left but Marin hit the game-winning jumper with two seconds left to give Southern Utah the win. He finished with 13 points with 11 of those points coming in the second half.

HOW. ‘BOUT. THAT. ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/N4KvzL3TFp

— SUU Men’s Basketball (@SUUBasketball) January 12, 2019

Up Next

Southern Utah improved to 7-7 overall and 2-3 in conference play and have won their last two games. They will face Portland State at home on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. on Pluto TV channel 236.

Portland State won the only meeting last season with a 96-91 victory in Cedar City.