MONTANA STATE SPORTS INFORMATION
Brian Fish lauded Quinton Everett with his best game of the season and Montana State withstood an early second half run to hold off Southern Utah for an 83-78 win in Cedar City on Saturday.
MSU sophomore Tyler Hall scored 23 points to lead the Bobcats, including 16 in the second half, which included him hitting all six of his free throws. True freshman point guard Harald Frey added 19 for the Cats. Everett, MSU’s lone senior scored 18 points, the second most of his career and the most against a Big Sky opponent. The win is MSU’s sixth in its last eight.
“I was really proud of Tyler because he made the game 40 minutes,” Montana State head coach Brian Fish said. “The game wasn’t going his way and he was able to make some shots.
“I think it came down to Quinton. He gave us his best game of the year and I can’t take enough away from that because (we had guys out with the flu). Quinton played exclusively the four and he just sucked it up and played a lot of minutes and was very effective.”
MSU junior Joe Mvuezolo did not make the trip because of the flu.
The Cats grabbed a 14-12 lead on Frey’s first triple of the day, and led for all but 30 seconds the rest of the way. That was part of a 9-2 run. MSU’s next big run spanned halftime, a 12-5 run that pushed MSU’s lead to 45-35 early in the second half. The Thunderbirds battled back though, tying the score at 48 on James McGee’s three-pointer at 14:25.
The game remained a battle the rest of the way. Southern Utah used hot shooting to stay in it until the end, hitting at a 54 percent clip to MSU’s 47 percent. The Thunderbirds also out-rebounded the Cats 33-to-24, but MSU forced a season-high 23 turnovers. Frey and Mandrel Worthy each produced three steals for the visitors.
“We thought we could get them to turn it over and we were able to do that,” Fish said. “We turned it into 20 points in transition which was huge and I think we could have got more. We didn’t take complete advantage of it, but you get 20 points unguarded, that’s pretty good off turnovers.”
SUU junior Randy Onwuasor scored 32 points to lead all players. McGee added 13.
Montana State raised its record to 12-14 overall, 7-6 in Big Sky play, with the win. Southern Utah falls to 4-22, 2-10. MSU returns home Thursday to host Portland State at 7 p.m.
