The University of Minnesota Duluth knocked off then-No. 21 St. Cloud State in thrilling fashion at Romano Gym, and head coach Annette Wiles hopes to maintain that momentum heading into the unofficial second half of the season.

The road ahead for UMD (5-5, 3-3 NSIC) gets no easier as they hit the road for a pair of games against teams voted into the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA)/USA Today Top 25 as of the end of the year, when they travel this weekend to Concordia University, St. Paul and Minnesota State University Mankato. The Bulldogs will be home for half of their remaining games, beginning with a two-week homestand starting January 9 against North Division rival Bemidji State University. The team will close out the month with four games on the road, and then be home two of the final three weeks as the calendar turns to February.

FIRST HALF HIGHS & LOWS
Junior forward Taylor Meyer claimed her second NSIC Player of the Week honor of the season after posting her fifth double-double of the season with 28 points on 12-of-19 shooting with 10 rebounds, two assists, and two steals against St. Cloud State. Head Coach Annette Wiles credits Meyer's success as part of a total team win.  "I feel like we have been a work in progress," Wiles said, adding that the match-up with St. Cloud State "was one of our most complete efforts in a 40-mintue game up to this point. Now, the challenge becomes 'can we consistently get our best players playing well?' and 'can we consistently get our bench to provide us the lift that they did in the St. Cloud game?' In saying that, we have had some pretty spectacular halves of basketball, and I'm hoping this is where we've found ourselves in knowing how to put 40 minutes together."

The Bulldogs had impressed in halves - scoring 40+ points in six halves this season including a 50-point second half in a losing effort against Minnesota State University-Moorhead. While they've netted a .500 record to this point, the competition has been fierce in this early going. "We've only had one bad loss," said Wiles. "When you say that you've played the number three team in the nation, at the time Pittsburg State was number seven in the nation, played St. Cloud on their floor, a team that was 20th in the nation when we beat them three weeks later. In terms of the ups and downs, the downs have come from us playing quality opponents out on the road. We've played an extremely aggressive schedule, and a part of that is being able to learn from those losses in hopes that it will build us to some momentum going forward."

Wiles believes the team is finally hitting its stride from a chemistry standpoint, adding that while the star players need to keep stepping up, it will be a total team effort needed to keep positive energy moving forward. "For our team as a whole, we're really starting to see Danielle Flood and Jessica Newman put together some quality minutes. When the two of them along with Taylor Meyer can get going, we can compete with anyone in the league and be a top team in the league. Moving forward, it's just putting those things together and moving forward with the momentum we took into break." Getting the rotation in order has been key for UMD as several new players crack the starting line-up. "We're starting a freshman - Anna Monke - she's at least now a second-semester freshman. We're starting a junior in our line-up who has now been player of the week twice who did not start for us last season. We've had a lot of former non-starters not starting this season. So, a part of it is our starters playing well together and getting us off to good starts. We need to get more productivity off of our bench. Our bench has got to bring more to every game situation than what we have been getting, and that's a huge focus for us moving forward."

The Bulldogs rank just tenth in the NSIC in scoring defense, allowing 70.4 points per game this season, at the number increases to 71.5 in NSIC contests. Wiles says it's something the team is focusing on this week in practice. "We need to get it hopefully a little lower than where it recently has been, and that's one area we're hoping to improve. We want to put 40 minutes of defense together, and at the same time, we really need to lock down our rebounding. We are seeing teams in our conference really putting together astronomical numbers together in terms of rebounding. We've got to be a competitive rebounding team. I'd love to see us put greater effort towards those areas. The big thing is getting on a roll. This is that time of year where you're hoping you can put things together. We want to get off to a good start and really keep moving forward."

SCOUTING THE GOLDEN BEARS (Friday, Jan. 2, 6:00 p.m.) - Live Stats/Video
• Concordia-St. Paul (6-5, 2-3 NSIC, RV) suffered its third defeat in its past five games, 64-60 last time out against Minnesota State Mankato in the 2014 finale. UMD owns a 21-18 all-time record against the Golden Bears.
• Senior forward Annika Whiting leads the team averaging 14.4 points per game so far this season while also ranking sixth in the NSIC hauling down 9.2 rebounds on average in league play this year. Sophomore Mishayla Jones and senior Ameshia Kearney are each averaging 12.2 points per game against NSIC foes so far this season.
• Junior forward Kionda Nicks ranks fourth in the NSIC with 4.4 assists per outing this season, with Kearney and Jones each not far off her pace at 4.0 and 3.8 this year in conference play.

SCOUTING THE MAVERICKS (Saturday, Jan. 3, 4:00 p.m.) - Live Stats/Video
• Minnesota State (7-3, 4-1 NSIC, RV) knocked off Concordia last time out and has won four its last five games after a two-game losing skid that concluded non-conference play. The Bulldogs own a 30-27 all-time record against the Mavericks.
• Senior forward Lexie Ulfers leads MSU with 13.8 points per game so far this season and is currently third in NSIC play averaging 17.4 points and fifth averaging 10.0 rebounds through five games. Sophomore Sammie Delzotto (14.0) and senior Aubrey Davis (12.0) also crack the top ranks in the league in scoring.
• Ulfers' 62.5 percent scoring average leads the conference so far this season while Davis is second in the league at 5.2 assists per game.

BULLDOG 'BYTE
"Why wouldn't we be familiar with playing a ranked team? Concordia is a team that always plays with a lot of firepower on their home floor. Where we are, we're focusing our energy or our effort less on them as on ourselves. We've just been trying to get ourselves playing consistently well, specifically getting our best players playing consistently well. We have felt like we have been taking real strides towards that. These games this weekend are like any other conference game this season: anyone can beat anybody on any night, as you're seeing all throughout our league. This is just another opportunity for us to go out and take a step forward in improving our game and our success." - Wiles on continuing play against a pair of tough conference foes

The Bulldogs and Golden Bears will take the court at the Gangelhoff Center in St. Paul on Friday night at 6:00 p.m.