Junior forward
Taylor Lavery scored 14 points in the first half en route to a 20-point night for the University of Minnesota Duluth, but Northern State University worked a 21-point comeback to up-end the Bulldogs 58-50 at Romano Gymnasium on Friday night.
UMD (5-5, 2-2 NSIC) falls to 1-3 at home this season while Northern State (9-1, 3-1 NSIC) continues its roll into the conference season..
TOP SCORERS• Lavery led all scorers with his 20-point effort. Senior center
Brett Ervin netted 12 points to go with a team-high seven rebounds
• Three players hit double figures for Northern State, led by sophomore Darin Paterka's 12. The Wolves laso had a pair of players match Ervin for the game-high with seven boards - seniors Seth Bachand and Mitch White.
"Bitterly disappointing loss," head coach
Matt Bowen summed it up as UMD took a 40-19 lead with 16:53 remaining in the game and saw Northern State come all the way back, outscoring UMD 39-21 in the second half to claim victory. "I'm disappointed in myself, I didn't give our team a chance to win at the end. I thought we were in control of the game for a solid 25-30 minutes, but at the end of the day, we could not score when it mattered most ... We couldn't manufacture points at the free throw line. On the shots we did make, fouls were called. We just had a lot of bad breaks that snowballed one into another, and we had a drought."
As a team, the Bulldogs shot 35.6 percent while Lavery finished shooting 8-of-14 on the night. "He made some key shots from three. He had some good penetrating lay-ups. He did a good job of scoring in the first half. You know, the one shot he did make in the second half that I thought would give us some space, we ended up getting a moving screen called on us. I thought he had a good night tonight, and hopefully we'll see that more consistently as we move forward." The Wolves were just 33.9 percent from the floor and 9-of-27 in the second half, but took 28 trips to the free throw line compared to five for the UMD. The Bulldogs average 14.7 makes from the free-throw line per game and allow 9.2 per outing. It was the first time all season the Bulldogs had more than 20 fouls called against them, averaging 15.8 per game.
UP NEXTUMD returns to Romano Gymnasium to close out the season's first half with three home games, including against Northern State University and Minnesota State University-Moorhead next weekend. The Bulldogs and Wolves will start the action Friday night at 8:00 p.m., following the women's contest.
