CEDAR CITY, Utah – For the first time this season, four players scored in double figures led by a career-high 29 points from Kerah Nelson, but free throws proved to be the difference as Southern Utah outscored the IUPUI women’s basketball team 24-7 at the charity stripe en route to an 84-72 win at Centrum Arena Saturday evening.

Nelson connected on 12-of-18 field goal attempts en route to her career-high scoring output and she fell just one point shy of becoming the first Jaguar to reach the 30-point scoring plateau since Tiffany Kyser scored 30 on Feb. 3, 2003, ironically at Southern Utah.

“It’s going to be tough to win on the road when your opponent shoots that many more free throws than you do,” head coach Austin Parkinson said. “We need to learn to play without fouling and when you are on the road, you can’t turn the ball over and you have to get stops. We didn’t do that tonight and that’s why it’s been awhile since we have won on the road.”

“Kerah played really well for us tonight and competed on both ends of the court,” Parkinson added. “She has been playing really well the last few games and she was one of the big reasons we were in the game late. We just did some of the little things wrong tonight and that is what is separating us from winning.”

Nelson carried the Jags in the first half scoring 14 points to keep the Jags within striking distance.

The Jaguars and Thunderbirds traded a pair of buckets in the opening minutes before Southern Utah went on an early run. From the 17:11 mark to 12:36 mark, SUU went on a 14-4 run to open up a double-digit lead, 18-8.

Janna Eichelberger responded on the next possession burying a jumper just inside the 3-point line to bring the deficit to eight points, 18-10, before Nelson added two-lay-ups and a 3-pointer on three straight possessions to bring the Jags within one point, 18-17, forcing the Thunderbirds to burn a timeout with 11:03 on the clock.

Following the 9-0 run, the Jags continued to hit their open looks, including a trey by Jasmine Horne at the 3:18 mark, which kept IUPUI within three points, 33-30.

Despite shooting 68.6 percent (11-of-16) from the 14:18 mark to the 3:18 mark, the Jaguars went cold over the final three minutes misfiring on all seven attempts and the Thunderbirds were able to stretch their lead to eight points, 39-31, entering halftime.

Nelson continued her dominance in the paint scoring three of IUPUI’s first four buckets out of the half to give her 20 points in the game, but the Thunderbirds made five of their seven attempts from the floor in addition to a free throw as SUU expanded their lead to 51-39 by the first media timeout.

The 12-point deficit was trimmed to five points with 8:57 remaining, but a 7-0 response over the next 1:43 pushed the Southern Utah lead back to 12 at the under-eight-minute media timeout.

After the Thunderbirds cushion ballooned to 16 points, IUPUI was still able to trim the lead into single digits with under three minutes to play, but it was too little too late as SUU downed IUPUI, 84-72.

Shakeeta Cotton, Shea Collins, and Horne each scored in double figures with Cotton chipping in a career-high 12 points, while Collins and Horne scored 11 points and 10 points, respectively. All four of IUPUI’s double-figure scorers combined to hit 6-of-16 three-point attempts with the rest of the team going 0-for-5 from deep.

“We shot too many three’s tonight and I would have liked to get the ball inside a little more, but as a whole on the offensive end I thought we were pretty good.” Parkinson said. “I think we can carry this offensive performance into Monday’s game at UMKC.”