A big night from senior guard Mikh McKinney helped Sacramento State men’s basketball defeat the Portland State Vikings by a final of 73-60 Saturday, helping the Hornets inch closer to a first place finish in the Big Sky Conference.

Sac State jumped to 19-8 overall and 13-3 in Big Sky play. With the win, the Hornets are all by themselves atop the conference standings. They lead second-place University of Montana (13-4 in Big Sky) by a half game in the standings and own the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Grizzlies.

Despite the victory’s implications on the standings, Sac State coach Brian Katz said it was business as usual.

“You know, [it was] just a typical kind of game,” Katz said. “We told our guys when this thing started, ‘18 league games, 18 fist fights.’ We haven’t blown anybody out.”

Though not a blowout, the 13-point win marked the biggest margin of victory for the Hornets since the squad’s 75-59 home triumph over Montana State on Jan. 29.

Sac State shot 25 of 54 (46.3 percent) from the field for the game and made just three of 12 (25 percent) attempts from long distance. The Vikings were not far behind, making 22 of 48 (45.8 percent) shots from the floor and seven of 21 (33.3 percent) from behind the arc.

But turnovers buried Portland State, as the Vikings gave up the ball 17 times. Sac State scored 20 points off of the home team’s miscues.

“We kind of grinded it out,” Katz said.

Sac State took a 31-27 lead going into halftime off a buzzer-beating floater by McKinney for two points.

The contest was a tight one until the final few minutes with the Hornets leading by just two points with 7:04 on the clock in the second half. But a 12-1 run over the next five minutes sealed the deal for Sac State, with the team making its final 10 free throw attempts as the Vikings tried to play the foul game.

Officials called two technical fouls against Portland State in the game. Senior guard Dylan Garrity, who entered the game shooting 83.3 percent from the line, cashed in on the first two free throw opportunities created by the technicals, but missed the latter pair.

McKinney had a team-high 21 points, making seven of 15 attempted field goals and going six for six at the free-throw line. The senior also tallied four assists in 39 minutes played.

Saturday’s game served as a rematch of a Feb. 7 game in which the Hornets beat the Vikings 64-60, surviving a blown 14-point lead to take a close contest at the Hornets Nest.

McKinney said the familiarity helped when the teams faced off again three weeks later.

“You go up again and you know a little bit of what they do, and their DNA and stuff like that,” McKinney said. “We just created a game plan similar to the last one, but made little adjustments that we knew we had to make, but that’s about it.”

Garrity was the Hornets’ next highest scorer with 15 points. He shot five of 10 from the field but made just one of six attempted 3-pointers. The guard played 36 minutes.

Sophomore forward Nick Hornsby also had a strong defensive game for the visiting team. Hornsby reeled in eight rebounds—seven on defense—and stole the ball five times in 30 minutes on the floor. He also scored 10 points.

“He’s our best defender,” Katz said of Hornsby. “There’s no doubt… He’s kind of a game-wrecker. He deflects passes, he bats the ball out, he rebounds [and] he gets steals. His length and athleticism are kind of his strengths.”

The victory for Katz’s group guarantees the Hornets will earn at least a No. 3 seed in the eight-team conference tournament, which will be held at the regular-season champion’s campus on March 12-14.

With two games left on the schedule, Sac State will continue its season-ending road trip at 6:05 p.m. Thursday against Southern Utah University.