**Open this box score at your own advisory. A statting error has led to a portion of the second half currently residing within the first half instead. Final numbers can be trusted, but half-by-half figures will be slightly off-kilter. The numbers contained within this story are the result of manual statting after the fact.**

Duluth, Minn.- The #14 UMD men's basketball team defeated Michigan Tech 99-65 in Romano on Saturday. With the win, UMD improves to 5-1 on the season.

34-point margin of victory aside, it took a little bit of time for the Bulldogs to establish any separation at all from the Huskies. 

The first ten minutes of the opening frame were hotly contested. UMD was able to take some two-possession leads at scores of 6-2 and 15-10, but each time, Michigan Tech came storming back. In fact, the Huskies ended up with a 16-15 advantage of their own at the 11:30 mark on the back of a Brad Simonsen layup. Five points from Drew Blair broken up by another Husky bucket from Logan Geissler helped to re-establish a two-score lead for the Bulldogs at 22-18. Rather than subtracting from that possession total yet again, UMD decided to add to it- soon enough, they led 29-21 with 6:01 to play. The Bulldogs didn't much look back after that. From the last time the Huskies were within a score at 20-18, UMD went on a 28-14 run, doubling Michigan Tech's pace. The Bulldogs found themselves going into halftime up 48-32. 

UMD did it in a variety of ways, but in every case, it did it efficiently. The Bulldogs closed out the half shooting 17-32 (53.13%) from the field and 3-6 from three. They were also nearly automatic from the charity stripe, going 13-15 (86.67%) from the line in the half. Leading the charge through it all was Blair, who ended the frame with 14 points on 5-10 shooting. The redshirt-senior guard also had three steals on the half. Charlie Katona was the Bulldogs' other double-digit point-getter with 11 on 4-6 shooting. He also had five rebounds in the frame. Speaking of efficiency, Jack Middleton had seven points on perfect 3-3 shooting in the half. 

While UMD's offensive outing was massively important in them heading into the break with a 16-point advantage, important too was their effort on the other end of the court. The Bulldogs held the Huskies to just 12-34 (35.29%) shooting from the field. No Tech player walked into the locker room with double-digit scoring on the day just yet.

Out of the break, the Bulldogs just kept rolling. 

It took less than two minutes into the half for UMD to own a 20-point advantage at 54-34. With 13:57 remaining, that lead was almost 30 at 71-42. In a game where everything else was sticking, this 30-point plateau was something that alluded the Bulldogs for much of the half. Oh well, can't have it all.

Unless… you can. A Joshua Strong three-ball with 2:25 left made it 92-62. 

About half a minute later, Tech's Pete Calcaterra drained a three of his own to cut the lead back down to 27. However arbitrary it may have been, the 30-point advantage was gone just as fast as it had arrived. But that didn't mean it couldn't be attained once again. To see such an effort through, the Bulldogs called upon a secret weapon. Enter Isaiah Watts.

Before this game, Watts had seen just three minutes of action back in UMD's home-opener against Southern Arkansas. He didn't have any stats to his name just yet. All of that changed on Saturday. Watts ended up having four minutes to make an imprint on this game- challenge accepted. He scored five points on 2-2 shooting from the field and threw in two boards and an assist for good measure. Each-and-every one of those points were pivotal in the Bulldogs' efforts of tackling the 30-point win white whale, the one that had escaped their grasp by just one point in the last game Watts had played in. He wouldn't let his team be denied on this night. The Bulldogs took the game 99-65. 

What a shooting night materialized for UMD when the smoke settled at the final buzzer. The Bulldogs went 34-59 (57.63%) from the field in the contest, 6-11(54.55%) from three. UMD continued its trend of being money from the free-throw line, too, closing the game 25-30 (83.33%) from the stripe. All kinds of Bulldogs had their paws all over these shooting clips- five of them even hit double-digits. Blair led the way with 20 points while going 8-16 from the field. Both Charlie Katona and Middleton had 15 points on 4-6 and 6-7 shooting respectively. Andrews had 14 points himself on 5-8 (62.5%) shooting while also adding nine rebounds to the mix. Joshua Brown had 10 points (going 5-5 from the free-throw line) and also held a tie for the team-high in assists with Zach Lea at four. 

The Bulldog defense stayed stout through 40 minutes, too. The Huskies shot just 27-69 (39.13%) from the field in the contest and just 7-22 (31.81%) from three. It was a disciplined defensive outing, too, Tech shooting just six total free-throws in the game compared to 30 attempts for UMD.  As if this wasn't enough for the Huskies, the Bulldogs also racked up eight steals across the contest compared to just two for Tech. This wasn't much of a recipe for point generation for the Huskies, and the final stats reflect this. Just one Husky had double-digit points, that being Eric Cal with 11.

WORDS FROM WIECK

Throughout the season, UMD head coach Justin Wieck has consistently asked more of his team's offense. That's not because it hasn't been good enough to win games- Wieck's Bulldogs are now 5-1. It's because he knows it can be better than good enough.

Saturday's performance was a taste of what could be for UMD. Wieck was excited to see this, but it certainly didn't catch him off guard. 

"I thought our guys attacked the rim all night long," Wieck said, "We only shot 11 threes and made six of them, so for us, it was about getting into the paint and getting to the basket. I've always felt like it's a matter of time until our offense gets rolling with the guys we have and the way we played all last year… It's just been a grind most of the year, but these last two games have felt a lot more like our team. That's kind of what you find out about a lot of times throughout the season- you've got to find out what you're not doing great. Our guys have done a great job of continuing to work on it and working on their games and just kind of trusting that good things are going to happen."

You never want to be a one-trick pony, though, good as the trick might be. 

And for as well as the Bulldogs played from an offensive standpoint on Saturday, they put in just as much effort on the defensive side of the ball. Wieck described this as the fruits of a lot of labor in practice heading into this game finally being beared.

"I think our guys really locked into a game plan tonight," Wieck said. "(Michigan Tech's) got a really unique offense that's tough to guard, and they kind of put you in some really difficult spots defensively. They're shooting 48% on the year- we held them to 39%. I was really proud of our guys for digging into the details. Our scout team was great, running their offense the last couple days, and I think they really got us prepared. It's an overall team effort for us. All 15 of our guys really chipped in to this one, for sure."

Holistic team effort. There's really no better an encapsulation of that idea playing out in a game setting than Watts' spark plug performance off of the bench Saturday for UMD. 

Watts is a Bulldog. Wieck felt as if his performance affirmed that he's 100% bought into that moniker- and all that it calls for. It'll take that level of commitment from each and every Bulldog moving forward for the team to continue to reach towards the heights that they're after. 

"(Watts) works just as hard as everybody else on our team, so when he gets his opportunities, I'm happy for him that he took advantage," Wieck said. "I always tell him and all our guys: everybody's got to be ready. We've got ten guys dressed right now, and everybody's got to be ready to roll, and when it was his turn, he was ready tonight. We've got a ton of confidence in all of our guys, and for us, it's about just trying to capture how we played tonight and how we've played the last couple games- especially on the offensive end- and keep on getting better as we go."