Duluth, Minn- UMD men's basketball secured a convincing 80-62 victory in Romano over visiting squad Upper Iowa on Friday. The Bulldogs improve to 13-4 on the season with the victory and move to 9-2 in NSIC competition.
Emphasis on "convincing."
The Peacocks did open the scoring, Austin Hilmer sinking a three-ball to give his team an early advantage. And it's one Upper Iowa would enjoy for a nice 3:03 chunk of the first frame until Charlie Katona scored at the 15:22 mark to give UMD its first lead of the game. Spoiler alert: the Bulldogs would need no second, third, fourth leads. No need to regain an advantage when you never lose it to begin with.
It is in fact true that UMD led this contest for 35 minutes and 22 seconds of its runtime- however, that doesn't mean that half an hour and change was always a walk in the park.
For an example, let's head to the 11:02 mark of the first half. UMD just put itself up seven off of a layup from Mattie Thompson. Less than 20 seconds later, it was Thompson again with another big bucket off the bench, and UMD's lead was up to nine. It started to look like the Bulldogs may run away with this one early- not so fast. The Peacocks proceeded to counter with a 7-0 run over the next 1:42 of playing time to draw within a bucket at 21-19 with 9:03 left to work with until the break. Jake Hilmer had been a man on a mission in this stretch, scoring five of its points himself.
But while that example showcases one of the truths of this game in the form of Upper Iowa's resiliency, this next one reveals UMD's trend of meeting these kinds of runs with equal- or greater- reactions.
Over the next three minutes of playing time post-Peacock hotstreak, the Bulldogs rattled off a big run of their own. In fairness to the whole "equal or greater" notion, this wasn't quite a 7-0 run that the Bulldogs put together. A 7-2 stretch isn't a bad consolation, though- especially when you're already winning. With 6:03 on the clock, UMD was up 28-21.
Make that 37-31 with just 41 seconds remaining in the frame. It sure felt like the Bulldogs might walk into the break unscathed with a two-score lead in-tow. Well… instead, the Peacocks scored four unanswered points across these last few ticks of the clock. That meant that even for all of their efforts, all of the time in which they'd held the lead, the Bulldogs would enter the second half up just two at 37-35.
There was plenty of reason for the Bulldog faithful in Romano to be optimistic, though, even leaving out the fact that UMD had led this game for so long. For one thing, the Bulldogs' team defense had locked down Upper Iowa from an efficiency standpoint all half long. The Peacocks went just 12-34 (35.3%) through 20 minutes. And this wasn't an effort performed at the expense of offensive focus- UMD shot exactly 16-32 (50%) in the first half as a unit.
It's not only that that scoring output was so efficient- it was well-dispersed, too. It's hard to contain an offense when it seems to have a near-limitless amount of meaningful contributors. We sure do get an example of this on UMD's stat sheet through 20 minutes. No Bulldog crossed double figures in scoring in the first frame. It was Austin Andrews who led the charge with seven points. Instead… including Andrews, six UMD players had tallied six points (or more, for Andrews) in the half. Katona, Thompson, Joshua Brown, Drew Blair and Joshua Strong round out the rest of the list with six tallies a pop. Katona paired his points with a team-high eight rebounds.
With that halftime stats roundup in mind, it seemed an odd case that UMD found itself up just two going into half number two. Don't worry- it didn't take very long for the Bulldogs' lead to start reflecting its efforts.
How's 3:37 of playing time sound? That's how long it took UMD to develop its first double-digit lead of the contest at 47-37 coming out of the break. The Peacocks would immediately cut the lead back down to a single figure off of a Lucas Duax three, but once Blair countered with a three of his own to make it 50-40… all bets were off. For nearly eight minutes, from the 16:23 mark of Blair's three until there was just 8:58 remaining, UMD's advantage didn't dip below 10 a single time. But at that aforementioned 8:58 spot, Duax sank a layup to finally trim his team's deficit down to nine once again.
If you were worried that this would spark some momentum within the visiting squad, fear no longer. Funny enough, it was the Bulldogs that found themselves inspired to go on their biggest run of the entire game, instead.
In a hair over four minutes, UMD rattled off a red-hot 11-0 stretch to take a commanding 20-point grip on the game with only 4:42 remaining. Nail, meet coffin. For all the fight the Peacocks had shown to this point, this was almost more of an issue of time than anything else- and you only get 40 minutes to work with in a game.
Some quick work from Upper Iowa did trim UMD's lead down to 16, but even though that only took the Peacocks just under two minutes to accomplish, they now had just 3:08 to work with to handle the rest. Again, father time is undefeated. And it sure didn't help the visiting squad's efforts that UMD kept scoring. The Bulldogs would match the Peacocks punch-for-punch in the dying minutes of the game until it was UMD that dealt the final blow to build their lead back up to 18. At a final score of 80-62, that's where it would rest.
Brown had had a solid start to the game through 20 minutes as a member of the six-point club. In the second frame, though, the junior guard hit another gear. Brown scored 11 points on 3-6 shooting in half number two, going 2-4 from deep in the process. It was the only double-digit scoring effort in a half that the game would see out of a UMD defense that was about as well-distributed on Friday as an offense could be. Evidence of this continues to pile up the further you go down the second half stat sheet. Two Bulldogs sat just three points shy of Brown's mark with eight points, those being Thompson and a surging Jack Middleton. Middleton did a little bit of everything down the stretch, pairing those points with four rebounds and four assists. And right behind this pair of scorers was Strong, who had an efficient second-frame outing of seven points on 3-5 (60%) shooting.
Speaking of efficiency, that was the name of the game for the Bulldog offense as a whole once again in the second half. In fact, UMD was even more precise than it had been before, operating at 51.6% from the field. All-told, the Bulldogs closed the night 32-63 from the field, a final shooting clip of 50.8%.
Meanwhile… UMD's defense? That also only got better with time. Upper Iowa went just 9-29 (31%) under the Bulldogs' watch in the final frame. They'd close the day going 33.3% overall on 21-63 shooting.
For the third-consecutive time, it was Brown that found himself at the top of UMD's scoring charts by the end of the night. He scored 17 while going 6-11 (54.5%) from the field. The junior guard also grabbed six rebounds. Meanwhile, Thompson put up the second double-figure scoring game of his young collegiate career. He had 14 points on 4-7 (57.1%) shooting. The redshirt-freshman forward had ice in his veins at the charity stripe, closing the day a perfect 6-6 from the line. And why not throw in a career high four steals, too?
Rounding out UMD's list of double-digit scorers were Strong and Andrews. Strong had 13 while going 5-8 (62.5%) from the field and 3-5 (60%) from deep. Andrews potted 11 points on 5-7 (71.4%) shooting to go with two assists and five rebounds. On the subject of boards, though Katona's six points on the night didn't quite get him to the double-digit table, he led the team in rebounds with nine.
Upper Iowa was led by Jake Hilmer, who scored a game-high 22 points to pair with six assists (which also led the team). Duax was the Peacocks' other double-digit scorer with 11 points to go with six rebounds. Nick Reid led the rebounding department for Upper Iowa with 12, which was also a game-high.
WORDS FROM WIECK
Whether you watched this game live, dug through its statistical offerings after the fact, or did a little bit of both, you probably came away with a similar feeling, one that told you this was one of UMD's more impressive outings of the entire season.
As it turns out, this trend holds if you were coaching in this game, too.
UMD coach Justin Wieck had some high praise for his team after Friday's performance. In particular, he highlighted the fire the team seemed to be playing with all throughout the night.
"I think our effort was just extremely high just from a team standpoint for 40 minutes," Wieck said. "I thought it was our most consistent, just high-energy effort we've had all year. I thought that carried over to both ends of the floor."
As Wieck alluded to, when you're humming along from an energy standpoint, everything else tends to feel a little easier.
Let's start on the defensive side of the ball. Upper Iowa's 33.3% shooting percentage was actually the lowest the Bulldogs have allowed all year.
That's a figure that UMD's efforts on that end of the court certainly warranted Friday. Wieck would agree.
"I'm proud of our defense," Wieck said. "(Upper Iowa's) a really high-powered offensive team that can get going. Walked into halftime, and they were at 35% from the field. Wasn't quite sure if we could do that again, and we hold them to 32% in the second half. Holding them to 62 points is awesome."
And while it wasn't quite a season-high mark, UMD's 50.8% shooting clip sure isn't anything to shake a stick at.
The theme of the offensive scheme on Friday? Spreading the wealth. It's something Wieck always strives to see a team like this- one that has so many weapons at its disposal- put into practice in a game setting. He sure got his wish against the Peacocks.
"We had so many guys on the offensive end that stepped up and made some big plays," Wieck said. "You talk about balance- we had seven guys that scored six points or more. Our top-eight guys all scored. When you don't have anybody shooting more than 10 or 11 shots, it tells me that we're moving the basketball, we're working to get good shots. I just thought our overall effort was as high as we've had all year long."
UP NEXT
The Bulldogs close out their weekend stay in Duluth by welcoming Winona State to town on Saturday, Jan. 14. Tip-off against the Warriors is set for 5:30 p.m. And don't forget about the themes- yes, both of them- for Saturday's bout. It's 80s/Blackout Night in Romano. We encourage you to dress the part.
