THE OPENING TIP
UMD men's basketball is set to host its first full weekend of NSIC action this season as a pair of tough conference foes make the trek to Romano to ring in the new year. UMD will face off against Northern State on Saturday, Dec. 31 at 3:00 p.m. before meeting MSU Moorhead on Sunday, Jan. 1, also at 3:00 p.m. Fans between the ages of 3 and 17 get into Sunday's game free of charge.

LAST TIME OUT
No need to try to refresh the page or adjust your screens- that is indeed the slate of opponents UMD was supposed to face two weekends ago. The NSIC may be nationally touted as a pretty tough conference, but even it can't do much against Mother Nature.

Winter storms caused the conference to shuffle around some schedules, sticking this homestand into New Year's Weekend instead. What took its place back before the holiday break was a single Sunday matinee contest on Dec. 18 against the (weather appropriate) Huskies of St. Cloud State.

This was a rematch, the first UMD's had all season, and it had the task of trying to follow up an OT thriller in St. Cloud back in November. The Bulldogs had taken that one 94-89. A few Sundays ago, they did pretty good work early in their efforts to take round two as well. UMD jumped out to an early 16-8 lead, and while St. Cloud would eventually be able to even the score a few times, they wouldn't secure the lead for the rest of the half. The Bulldogs were in the driver's seat almost the entire first frame, and they had a 42-36 lead at the half to show for it.

Chalk nearly half of those points up to a man who's been on a mission this past month of the season: Drew Blair. In just 20 minutes of action, the guard already had 19 points- on 6-8 shooting, no less. Not only that, but Blair had gone 5-6 from beyond the arc in the half.

When Blair opened the second frame with yet another three to push UMD's advantage up to nine at a score of 45-36, the Bulldogs seemed to be sitting pretty. Slowly but surely, though, the Huskies started to claw back. And before you knew it, they'd done more than tie the game back up- they'd taken a lead of their own at 51-49 with 13:22 remaining. It was St. Cloud's first lead since the score had been 6-5.

The two teams would trade blows for some time until it was the Huskies' turn to take more of a hefty advantage. With just 4:44 left in the game, St. Cloud held their highest lead of the contest at a score of 57-50. The Bulldogs had less than five minutes left to pull off a rally in Romano- and they did just that. UMD outscored St. Cloud 9-2 to close out regulation, sending these two teams into a familiar extra frame at a score of 69-69.

Overtime proved to be an all-out dogfight. All told, there were four ties and five lead changes in just five minutes of play. So even with just 32 ticks left on the clock, it was hard for UMD's 80-78 lead to feel like a lock. Then Blair collected a rebound off of a Husky miss and found Joshua Brown streaking down to the other end of the court for a monster dunk. Collectively, hundreds of Bulldog fans mustered a huge sigh of relief that opened the door for a little celebrating. It was this slam that was eventually enough to propel UMD past St. Cloud in overtime once again, this time at a score of 84-80. 

Back in St. Cloud, Blair had had a career night, scoring a new personal best of 38 points. He must really enjoy playing against the Huskies, because in this rematch in Romano, Blair outdid himself. The guard put up a new touchstone of 39 points, this time on 13-20 shooting from the field and a whopping 7-11 mark from three. The guard added in nine rebounds and four assists for good measure. 

Three other Bulldogs closed the night in double figures, those being Brown (14 points on 6-12 shooting with 5 rebounds), Charlie Katona (12 points) and Jack Middleton (10 points, six boards and a pair of assists/steals).


BLAIR JOINS THE RANKS OF BEST BULLDOG SCORERS
It was only a matter of time, right?

With his second career high in just under a month against St. Cloud, Blair propelled himself into the Top 10 for all-time scorers in UMD school history. The guard's 1,562 points situates him right at No. 10 on the list- for now. With plenty of season left to work with, there's reason to believe Blair will be making some headway up the ranks. 


RANKINGS ROUNDUP
It's been a good week in the rankings world for the Bulldogs. When the last D2SIDA Poll came out on Dec. 20, UMD kicked up four spots from No. 19 to No. 15. The Bulldogs maintained position at No. 3 in the D2SIDA's Central Region rankings, but this time around, they earned a first place vote. Then came the newest NABC poll this Tuesday. That saw UMD land at No. 21 and jump back into the Top 25 for the first time since the first week of the season.

STATS STATUS REPORT
Blair remains UMD's leading scorer heading into the new weekend, averaging 21.8 points a night. Blair also holds the team lead in average assists with 2.7. Austin Andrews is tops on the team in average rebounds with 7.8 a night. When he's not working hard along the boards, he's shooting with noticeable precision. The forward leads the team among players with at least 50 attempts with a field goal percentage of 61.5%

Also of note in the efficiency department is the work of both Katona and Joshua Strong. Katona's scoring his 14 points a night on 56.1% shooting from the field while Strong's working at a clip of 41.9% from beyond the arc, the highest mark on the team amongst players with at least 30 three-point attempts. 

As a team, the Bulldogs head into the weekend with the 24th-best scoring offense in the country, working at an average clip of 84.7 points a night. As is little surprise given some of the aforementioned numbers, they're doing it all pretty efficiently, too. UMD's average team field goal percentage of 49.2% is good for 26th in the nation. But a lot of the work towards that 84.7 figure is done from the line, a place the Bulldogs are pretty familiar with. UMD is ninth nationally in free throw attempts per game with 24.6 and tied for 12th in free throws made with 17.6.

SCOUTING REPORT ON NORTHERN STATE
It's been quite a decade in Aberdeen.

Between 2009-11, the Wolves experienced what, by their standards, was a bit of a lull. In that time, Northern State finished below .500 twice. Their best effort in this stretch was a 13-13 season in 2011-12. After clawing back to even footing, the Wolves haven't looked back. They failed to win less than 18 games in the ensuing 10 seasons after that 2011-12 mark. In fact, Northern State won at least 20 games in seven of those years. 

These are results more becoming of a  program that has 32 regular-season conference titles to its name over its history, three of those being added in this 10-year return-to-form run. And on the NSIC Tournament front, the Wolves actually found more success than ever during this time, more than doubling the contents of that trophy case with four-consecutive titles between 2017-21. The run even reached what was (as of now) its climax with the Wolves winning the Central Region in the NCAA Tournament in 2017-18 for the second time ever, the first since 1997-98.

Much of this work was done by Paul Sather, the former Wolves head coach that went 188-89 overall (a 67.9% win percentage) across nine seasons with Northern. Thus far, though, the new bench boss has done a pretty good job of carrying the torch. 

Enter Saul Phillips. Phillips came to Aberdeen after a seasoned background in the Division I world, having spent time with both North Dakota State and Ohio. He left both of those programs having won more games than he'd lost- so far, the story's been no different in this new playing field. Across three seasons (and what's occurred of the fourth) behind the Wolves' bench thus far, Phillips has gone a combined 73–23. He's already had two 20+ win campaigns, and the only time he didn't hit that mark was in a COVID-shortened 2020-21 season. He still got Northern to a 19-2 mark that year, which won the team the North Division title and sat them atop the NSIC overall. Not too bad of a consolation. 

So far, so good for Phillips and co. in year four. The Wolves sit at a record of 8-3 on the year with a 4-1 mark in NSIC play. 

Here's something that sure hasn't hurt Northern's efforts so far: each of its top four scorers from last year returned for this season and are currently operating in the same exact order when it comes to points per game. 

It all starts with Sam Masten. The guard led the way in his junior campaign with 15.6 points a contest- so far in his senior season, he's been even better. Masten's putting up 18.5 points a night right now. Not only that, but he's doing it with hyper efficiency. The guard's clicking at a clip of 58.7% from the field and 47.2% from three. As if this wasn't enough… Masten's arguably just as good at passing the ball as he is at shooting it. He's averaging a whopping 6.1 assists a night. That's not just first in the NSIC- it's ninth in the country. Toss in a team-leading 7.2 rebounds a game as a cherry on top. 

The rest of the quartet's done pretty well so far, too. Graduate forward Jordan Belka's averaging 13.6 points a night on 49.1% shooting from the field to go along with 6.9 boards. Tied with Belka for second in team scoring is Jacksen Moni, an impressive sophomore forward who pairs those points with 4.4 rebounds a game. Last but certainly not least is Augustin Reede, a senior sharpshooter of a guard. Reede's working with 11.8 points per game, but even more notable is the efficiency with which he's netting those points. Not only is the guard shooting 51.9% from the field, but he's potting threes with 49.3% efficiency, good for ninth in the country and second in the NSIC.

Reede is far from the only Wolf that likes to operate from beyond the arc. As a team, Northern is eighth in the country in average three point attempts (29.5) and sixth in three pointers made a game (11.1). Still, it's been a pretty efficient operation. Northern works at a clip of 37.7% from three as a unit, good for 58th in the nation. So, expect it to be raining threes in Romano on Saturday.

Something else UMD can rely on when it comes to this Northern State group- they're a disciplined bunch. This makes itself known in more ways than one. On one hand, the Wolves have the 10th best assist/turnover ratio in the country at 1.52, so you know they take pretty good care of the ball. But they take equal care to make the most of their opportunities behind the charity stripe. Northern's team free-throw percentage of 79.8% is 11th best in the nation. The Bulldogs are no strangers to the art of the free throw themselves in terms of generating them for their own interests, but they'll have to take extra precautions on the defensive side of that effort on Saturday. 

SCOUTING REPORT ON MSU MOORHEAD
Meanwhile, out in Moorhead, the start of the new millennium was a bit of a mixed bag.

The Dragons went 137-165 across two coaching tenures between the 1999-2000 and 2009-10 seasons. Only three of those campaigns saw the squad end with a winning record, including a standout 19-10 finish in 2002-03. Outside of these efforts and an even 14-14 mark in 2007-08, Moorhead hovered below .500 to start the 2000s.

Then came the era of Chad Walthall.

Walthall joined the fray at the turn of the decade ahead of the 2010-11 season. He immediately made his presence known by leading the team to a 15-12 finish, its first winning season in five tries. No reason to stand pat at that position in a second effort. Walthall's Dragon's finished 21-9 in 2011-12, marking the first time they'd won 20+ games since 1981-82. 

The train just kept chugging along from there. Catch a glance out the window and you'd see winning season after winning season, accolade after accolade passing by. 

In 12 seasons at the helm in Moorhead, Walthall posted an overall record of 240-120, good for a winning percentage of 66.7%. In that time, his Dragons had more seasons where they finished with 30+ wins (two) than they did years where they landed below .500 (just once). One of those 30-victory seasons was arguably the finest Moorhead has had in some time. In 2014-15, the Dragons finished 35-4. Along the way, Moorhead secured a split of the NSIC Regular Season Championship while making it all the way to the title game of the NSIC Tournament. Perhaps even more notable within the school's history books was what the Dragons managed to do in the NCAA Tournament- for the first time in program history, Moorhead won the Central Regional and made it all the way to the Elite Eight. The Dragons would go on to lose that matchup, but they left that season with much to be proud of. Walthall entered the next season with a National Coach of the Year award under his belt.

The winning sure didn't stop there. Walthall and company went on to win one more NSIC Regular Season title in 2016-17, this one an outright win rather than a split. And what better way to bookend a career than to make some more history. In 2021-22, Walthall's last year with the team before retiring, the Dragons won their first ever NSIC Tournament Championship in the midst of a 19-12 season.

All good things must come to an end. Still, it's possible for two good things to happen in-sequence. As they say, when one door closes, another opens. On the other side of this one stood Tim Bergstraser.

Bergstraser took over as the head coach of Moorhead before the start of this season after having been an assistant coach on the squad since 2018. He's no stranger, then, to the program's winning ways- the question's become whether or not he can sustain them while being at the helm. So far, he's done a pretty good job. After a 3-2 start with losses to tough opponents in then No. 5 Black Hills State and NSIC contemporary Northern State, the Dragons have rattled off six consecutive wins. Four of those came in-conference, leaving Moorhead with a 4-1 NSIC record to pair with a 9-2 standing overall. Not bad for a first crack at it.

It's helped Bergstraser's efforts that for many of his players, this isn't their first rodeo.

All four of Moorhead's leading scorers so far this season played a part in the Dragon's tournament title-winning campaign. Included in this mix is the player that led the offensive charge in that effort- Lorenzo McGhee. The guard had a team-high 12.2 points a game last year. He's outdoing himself in his junior campaign, working at a clip of 14.9 points a night to lead the squad once again. He's also grabbing 5.1 boards a game, good for second on the team. Next comes Jacob Beeninga, whose story is a little different. Beeninga was a useful utility option for the Dragons last year, averaging 7.7 a night while leading the team in steals with 1.4. So far this year, the sophomore guard's offense has blossomed. He's averaging 14.8 points across 11 games this season. The best part for Moorhead is that he's doing it at no expense to his defensive capabilities- he still leads the team in takeaways with 1.5 a game. Why not throw in 4.8 rebounds and 2.5 assists a night for good measure? 

Third in scoring is Gavin Baumgartner, who finished second last year with 11.8 points a night while leading the team in average assists with 3.3. Similar to Beeninga, Baumgartner's scoring touch has improved alongside his passing ability rather than at the cost of it. The senior guard's averaging 12.7 points a game (and working at a clip of 46.2% from beyond the arc) while maintaining his role as lead distributor, dishing out 3.8 assists a night so far this season. Closing out the group of double-digit Dragons is Jaden Stanley-Williams. The forward was a big rotational piece for Moorhead last year. He averaged 7.5 points, but he did so with precision, working at a rate of 47.8% from the field and 44% from three. This year, the senior's averaging 11.5 a game- and he's doing it as efficiently as ever. Stanley-Williams is operating on a 51.7 FG% while shooting 47.7% from deep. Not bad for a senior swansong.

One last note: watch out for Dane Zimmer. Moorhead's leading rebounder last season hasn't shown signs of slowing down in his junior campaign. The forward's pairing a hyper-efficient 8.5 points a night on 63.6% shooting with a team-high 6.8 boards a game so far this year.

This fab five, along with the rest of the Dragons, have contributed to a few team stats that make Moorhead even more difficult to deal with. For one thing, the Dragons really don't like giving the ball over- their average of 8.8 turnovers a night is the lowest in the entire country. And Moorhead didn't get there simply by being timid with the ball- the team's assist/turnover ratio of 1.64 is fifth-best in the country. So, not only do the Dragons boast some strong scorers, but they also know how to keep the ball in the hands of said scorers. With UMD showcasing a pretty stout offense of its own, watch for Sunday to be a potential scorer's delight. 


THE BROADCASTS
Can't make it to Romano this weekend? No worries! Catch all of the action through the NSIC Network by following the links below:

vs Northern State (Saturday, Dec. 31 @ 3:00 p.m.): bit.ly/3BESyD8
vs MSU Moorhead (Sunday, Jan. 1 @ 3:00 p.m.): bit.ly/3FWlKb8

UP NEXT
UMD will find itself out on a Minnesota road trip in the first full weekend of 2023. The Bulldogs' first stop will be in St. Paul for a contest against Concordia on Friday, Jan. 6 at 7:30 p.m. UMD then moves out to Mankato for a meeting with the Mavericks on Saturday, Jan. 7 at 5:30 p.m.