(Cedar City, UT) - Southern Utah University hosts Sacramento State Saturday in the Thunderbirds’ third home game as well as their third Big Sky Conference contest of the 2012 season.

Southern Utah (2-3/1-1 Big Sky) is coming off a 24-17 loss to No. 2 Montana State last weekend in the Thunderbirds’ Homecoming game. SUU rallied from a 10-point second-half deficit to tie the game at 17-17 but missed opportunities to take the lead late in the game and wound up losing their first-ever Big Sky home game to the highly-regarded Bobcats.

Sacramento State (3-2/1-1 Big Sky) broke open a close game in the second half to take a 54-31 win at Idaho State last week. The Hornets took a 27-23 edge into halftime, then dominated the second half in picking up their first conference win of the season.

Both teams are 0-1 at home and 1-0 on the road in conference play. The Thunderbirds won their Big Sky opener at Portland State, 49-42, before falling at home to Montana State, while the Hornets lost at home to North Dakota, 35-13, before picking up last week’s win at Idaho State.

The Game: Sacramento State (3-2/1-1 Big Sky) at Southern Utah (2-3/1-1), Saturday at 1:05 p.m. (MDT), Eccles Coliseum (8,500, Hellas MatrixTurf), Cedar City, Utah.

The Series: The two teams have split a dozen games right down the middle, 6-6. SUU holds a 4-2 edge in games played in Cedar City, however. The Thunderbirds snapped a three-game losing streak against CSUS with a 35-14 win over the then-No. 12 Hornets in Cedar City in last season’s home-opener. Prior to that win, the last time the ’Birds had come out on top of the Hornets was back in 1993, when SUU pulled out a 23-17 victory in Sacramento, Calif. The SUU/CSUS series began in 1986 when the T-Birds joined the Hornets in the Western Football Conference. The teams then met every year as members of the WFC and subsequently the American West Conference, until CSUS left the AWC to join the Big Sky in 1996.