ARKADELPHIA, Ark. – Southern Arkansas opened its 2021 campaign on Thursday night inside the Duke Wells Center as Henderson State played host to the Muleriders in the first of 20 scheduled league contests in the altered, pandemic-affected season. The Muleriders used a hot night shooting and saw five players score in double figures to earn an 83-77 win over the Reddies on a night in which the Great American Conference took a major step forward in gaining a sliver of normalcy.
 
It had been 308 long days since an Andy Sharpe-led squad last competed, which dates back to the team's season-ending loss to regional power Southeastern Oklahoma State in the opening round of the league tournament on March 5. But on Thursday night, the Muleriders picked up a key season-opening victory as it snapped a four-game losing streak to HSU, the defending GAC Tournament Champions.
 
Junior combo Jalen Brooks turned 29 minutes on the floor into a 16-point, nine-rebound performance to earn People's Bank Player of the Game honors, while senior forward Devante Brooks and junior newcomer Blake Rogers matched the younger Brooks' 16 points with the latter impacting early in his Mulerider debut.
 
Rogers connected on five of his first six three-point attempts in the victory and added three assists and two rebounds in a team-high 37 minutes of work. D. Brooks was an efficient 6-of-7 from the floor with six rebounds, five of which came on the defensive end of the floor to give him 421 such boards for his career; nine back of becoming the program record holder.
 
The Muleriders sank half of their attempts from the field (24-of-57) in the win and the team's 47.8% clip from behind-the-arc is the best such mark since connecting on 54.2% of their 24 attempts from range against Northwestern Oklahoma State on February 2, 2019; a span of 38 games. Much of the success from range came courtesy of Rogers who accounted for nine of the team's first ten points of the game.
 
Fellow junior newcomer Victor Ihrihri connected from deep for the first time in SAU Blue and Gold at the 11:21 mark of the opening half to push SAU out to a 19-17 lead; their first since Rogers knocked down his first triple try as a Mulerider less than 40 seconds into the start of the Eastern Division affair.
 
The Reddies would regain the lead and see it blossom to nine points at 28-19 with 7:20 to play before the intermission. It was an even impact of veteran returners and fresh newcomers for the Muleriders in the season opener as JUCO transfer Tyler Garrett connected on two free throws to trigger a 22-7 run to close out the half. During that sequence, J. Brooks delivered eight-straight points in a span of 81 seconds to give the Muleriders a brief lead before a go-ahead bucket from redshirt sophomore Trent Ivy moments after an HSU make would give Southern Arkansas an advantage that they would allow Henderson State to only tie through the remainder of the contest.
 
The second-half lead grew to as much as 11 points through the first three and a half minutes of action and shrunk to an even 51-all with 14:14 left. The elder Brooks took over for the Muleriders as he dropped 14 of his 16 points in the second half with nine of those points coming after SAU broke the tie for the final time with under 14 minutes to play.
 
Henderson State would manage to pull within a single point of the SAU lead at 70-69 with 4:10 remaining, but paint buckets by the Brooks brothers on consecutive possessions following the one-point advantage helped Southern Arkansas stave off the Reddies late. Plagued by early foul trouble, senior guard Aaron Lucas accounted for seven points, including four makes from the stripe, in the game's final 1:47 to help seal the victory.
 
The Muleriders cut their ten first half turnovers in half in the final twenty minutes as they committed just five in the second half of play after struggling early on in the contest with eight turnovers through the under-8 media. SAU grabbed 41 rebounds to just 33 gathered by the Reddies.
 
Southern Arkansas returns to action this Saturday, January 9, for a league tilt with Ouachita Baptist inside the W.T. Watson Center. The Tigers dropped its GAC opener 84-77 to Harding. This weekend's home opener for the Muleriders will be the first NCAA-sanctioned event in Magnolia since March 11 when the SAU Men's and Women's Tennis teams each earned victories over Emporia State. That span, which is an obvious department-record for time elapsed between home events, will end at 304 days come the scheduled 4 p.m. tip-off. Live coverage links are available at www.MuleriderAthletics.com.