CEDAR CITY — Parsa Fallah scored a career high 29 points as the Southern Utah Thunderbirds walked away with a 82-74 victory over the Idaho State Bengals on Saturday.
Southern Utah’s Parsa Fallah scored a game-high 29 points in SUU’s 82-74 win over Idaho State, Cedar City, Utah, Dec. 9, 2023 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News
“We were able to continue our really efficient play that we had against Utah here tonight, which is a good sign,” said SUU head coach Rob Jeter. ”As a coaching staff, we feel like the team has really bought in to what we are trying to establish as a culture and as a program and now we can start focusing on continuing to build upwards towards winning games and making the conference tournament.”
Neither team was able to establish an offensive rhythm in the first half but the T-Birds were able to close the half on a 4-0 spurt that would send them into the break with a 33-26 lead over the Bengals.
The second half was quite the opposite, as both teams came out shooting the ball well. The Bengals scored 48 points in the second half, shooting the ball 74% from the field. But SUU scored 49 points in the second half to ultimately would come away with an eight point victory.
T-Bird leaders
Parsa Fallah continued his unbelievable play, scoring a career-high 29 points shooting 13-16 from the field. He pulled down seven rebounds and had one steal in 34 minutes of play.
Southern Utah freshman Brock Felder dunks the ball at the end of SUU’s 82-74 win over Idaho State, Cedar City, Utah, Dec. 9, 2023 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News
Prophet Johnson scored 15 points, grabbed three rebounds and dished three assists to go along with one steal on the night. Zion Young got back into his offensive rhythm, scoring twelve points on 4-6 from the field and 2-4 from deep.
The Thunderbirds shot the ball 53% from the field and 70% from the charity stripe. SUU led for nearly the entire game and came away with the home win.
SUU vs. Utah
On Tuesday, SUU trailed by as many as 17 in the second half against Utah and battled back to lose by just two on the road.
At the under-four media timeout, the Thunderbirds trailed by just three points but could not take the lead. The Utes drained a pair of free throws and banked in a three-pointer at the buzzer to finish with the win 86-88.
“I thought our guys competed really hard and gave it everything they had,” Jeter said on Tuesday night. “There’s still things we can do better, but I was very pleased with our overall effort.”
Up Next
The Thunderbirds (3-6, 0-2) return to action against the Lumberjacks of Northern Arizona on Dec. 16 in Flagstaff, Arizona. The game will tip off at 2 p.m. and will be live streamed on ESPN+.
Written by Parker Haynie, Southern Utah University Athletics.
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