Junior Josh Fuller (Rexburg, Idaho/Madison HS) scored 19 of his career-high 25 points in the second half, but it was not enough as Dixie State came out on the short end of a 72-65 decision to Azusa Pacific in the Storm's Pacific West Conference home opener Saturday afternoon in the Burns Arena.

APU (8-3/2-1 PacWest) led 35-28 at the half, thanks in part to a 15-5 Cougar run that broke a 20-20 tie with eight minutes to go in the opening stanza. Dixie State (4-5/1-2 PacWest) clawed its way back into the game with a 15-5 spurt of its own over the first seven-plus minutes of the second half, with 11 of those points coming from Fuller, to wrestle the lead back at 43-40 with 12:44 remaining.

The Cougars stayed within striking distance, eventually pulling even at 49-49 after a pair of Austin Dyer free throws, but the Storm responded with six-straight points on two Kyler Nielson (Cedar City, Utah/Cedar HS) charity tosses, a Mark Ogden Jr. (Spring Valley, Calif./Steele Canyon HS) dunk and a Fuller lay-in to race out to their biggest lead of the game at 55-49 with 6:57 to go.

APU then got it going from the perimeter, connecting on 3-of-4 from downtown, while the Cougar defense held DSU to just five points and one field goal in a span of nearly four minutes, as Azusa Pacific rallied to reclaim the lead at 62-60 after a Lydell Cardwell trey with 2:45 left.

Senior Robbie Nielson (Gresham, Ore./Barlow HS) pulled DSU even with two free throws on the Storm's next possession, but Petar Kutlesic answered with another Cougar 3-pointer to give APU the lead right back at 65-62.

Down three with 50 seconds to go, Fuller came up with a steal and split a pair of free throws to get DSU with a bucket at 67-65, but that would be as close as the Storm would get as APU forward Joey Schreiber converted a conventional 3-point play on an offensive rebound and put back with 18 seconds to put the game away.

"I was really happy with the energy at the start of the second half, we came out and got a steal and a dunk and things were going well," DSU Head Coach Jon Judkins said. "Then we kind of laid back thinking that we hope they would miss instead of making them miss [on defense], and [Azusa Pacific] came back. Give Azusa credit, they are a good team. They are hard to match-up and they shoot the ball well. They his some big threes, but we had three possessions where we didn't score, could not get to the foul line and we could not get anything.

"It's tough loss, but I told my team that this is how we were last year and we came back from the [holiday] break and went on a winning streak," Judkins continued. "Things can happen, but we can't wait for somebody else to do it, we've got to do it ourselves."

Fuller hit on 10-of-15 from the floor to go with six rebounds and two steals in 36 minutes, while senior point guard Mason Sawyer (West Jordan, Utah/West Jordan HS) notched his first double-double of the year with 10 points and a career-high tying 10 assists. Dixie State battled through a cold-shooting night as the Storm managed to hit on 38.6 percent from the floor (22-of-57). However the Storm was outscored on the perimeter by a 39-6 count as DSU went 2-of-10 from beyond the arc, compared to 13-of-31 (.419) by APU. DSU did managed to go 19-of-23 (.826) from the line and outrebound the Cougars a 35-34 count.

APU connected on 24-of-52 from the floor (.462) and was 11-of-15 (.733) at the charity stripe. Schreiber led four Cougars in double figures with 18 points on 7-of-12 shooting, but it was his big 3-point play in the final minute that sealed the win for his side.

"That [Schreiber] rebound and two-and-one, that's the game, they made a play and we didn't. We get that rebound and we go down and score we win the game," says Judkins. "We'll bounce back and we'll do the things we need to do and get better. There's a lot of things we need to work on, but we need to be tougher and finish games, and that's something we're definitely going to work on."

After a 16-day break between games for the holidays, Dixie State will ring in 2016 with a home date against PacWest foe Chaminade on Tuesday, January 5, at 7:30 p.m., in the Burns Arena.