Duluth, Minn.- UMD men's basketball managed a big 83-68 victory over UMary in Romano on Friday. The win pushes the Bulldogs' overall record to 17-8- while moving its NSIC mark to 13-6.

Double-digit margin of victory aside… for the first five or so minutes of this one, it was anybody's game. In fact, those first five minutes and change of action had already seen the lead switch hands a total of five times. A Jack Middleton three-ball at the 14:51 mark to make it 11-10 UMD would spell the fifth of those changes. Ultimately, it'd be the last one of the entire first frame. 

But things were still tight through most of the opening 10 minutes of this one. By the 11:47 mark, UMD's lead was just a point at 19-18. A Mattie Thompson bucket would push the lead back up to three eleven seconds later, but we'd seen this story before- the question was whether this could be parlayed into a more secure advantage. A question quickly answered- a Middleton triple with exactly 11:11 on the clock gave the Bulldogs a pivotal two-score lead at 24-18. And as it turns out, UMD wouldn't lead by less than two possessions all the way until the break. 

Instead, the Bulldogs just kept building.  By the 4:17 mark, UMD's lead had reached a half-high of 13 at 40-27. Of course, this work didn't come without pushback from the Marauders. Mary actually responded to its steepest deficit of the evening with a huge 9-1 run in just a hair over two minutes to bring the game back to within five at 41-36. However, it'd be the Bulldogs that'd scoop up some momentum heading into the locker room, proceeding to outscore the Marauders 7-3 down the stretch of the first frame to end up with a 48-39 lead. 

Scoring- and with efficiency- was a big trend through 20 minutes for this Bulldogs club. Drew Blair is a quintessential example. The redshirt-senior guard potted 15 points on 5-8 shooting from the field and a 3-6 shooting effort from deep through one half. Then there's Middleton, who put up 11 points on 4-5 shooting built largely on a 3-4 clip from three. This pattern didn't disappear on a more macro scale, as the Bulldogs closed the half shooting 19-32 (59.4%) from the field as a unit.

UMD had done good work to get off to such a commanding start- and it was further rewarded for those efforts in the second half. The Bulldogs just kept riding their hot hand. By the time UMD regained a two-score lead they'd already held several times at a score of 61-50 off of a Middleton three with 13:55 remaining, that advantage wouldn't dip below two digits the rest of the way. 

That doesn't mean the second half was entirely without tension- with 4:02 still to go in the contest, a Zyon Smith layup trimmed UMD's lead back down to just 10. That gave the Marauders a decent amount of time to work with to try to mount a comeback bid- key work "try." Instead, the Bulldogs slammed the door shut. UMD would close the game on a contest-sealing 9-4 spurt that eventually saw the final score read 83-68 Mary. 

Several Bulldogs did their fair share of scoring in the frame. Three had eight points or more, those being Blair with nine and both Andrews and Middleton with eight. But another major metric from this half ended up resulting from the UMD defense. Mary shot just 12-34 from the field through the closing 20 minutes, a field-goal percentage of 35.3%.

By the game's end, it was Blair that reigned supreme as the day's leading scorer with 24 points on a stout 8-16 shooting mark from the field. The guard also grabbed seven boards and dished out three assists. Middleton posted a season-high 19 points on 7-13 shooting from the field and 5-10 work from deep. Coincidentally enough, Middleton also had seven rebounds and three assists. And speaking of coincidences… In the first half, Andrews tallied eight points on 4-5 shooting. In the second… he did the exact same thing again. If you're playing along at home, that means the junior forward closed with 16 points on an 8-10 effort from the field. Andrews also had six rebounds and (noticing a theme here) three assists.

As a team, UMD shot an impressive 34-65 from the court on the night, a 52.3% mark. 

Mary was led offensively by Smith, who posted 14 points. Veljko Radakovic wasn't all that far behind with 11 of his own. Rounding out the list of double-digit Marauders was Kam Warrens, who had 10 points to pair with a team-leading six rebounds.

A NEW FAB FOUR
In the entire history of UMD men's basketball, only three players had ever cracked the 1800 career point mark- until Friday. 

With 24 more points added to his name in the victory against UMary, Blair's career total currently rests at exactly 1801. He now sits just eight points shy of surpassing Mike Patterson for the third spot on the Bulldogs' all-time scoring list. 

WORDS FROM WIECK
All-the-same, Blair's historic offensive performance tonight was just one in a pool of strong efforts from the Bulldogs on that end of the court. 

We are talking about a UMD unit that closed the night with 15 total assists compared to just eight from the Marauders. And don't forget that 34-65 team shooting mark from earlier. In essence, this was a Bulldog offense that was humming as a total unit tonight. To UMD head coach Justin Wieck, that's something that sits at the core of this team's potential when it comes to pure production, and Friday was just another example of that. 

"I thought we had a great start in moving the basketball and being aggressive," Wieck said. "We've proven most of the year that when we really move it, and hunt great shots for others, we can be really good offensively. I thought we did that most of the night tonight."

But it's hard to win basketball games with just offense alone. Not every half will shape up exactly like the Bulldogs' first frame effort against the Marauders- scoring is inevitably prone to cooling. 

That's why Wieck was so optimistic about what he saw out of his group throughout the second half. It was a call to arms that ended up being answered quite effectively. 

"I challenged our guys to be better defensively at halftime," Wieck said. "They responded with a really solid effort. We have many ways to improve on that end, but I thought we made them take some tough shots in the 2nd half."