Mar. 9—SIOUX FALLS — At the end of the first half of the No. 6 UND men’s basketball team’s Summit League tournament semifinal game against No. 2 St. Thomas, the Fighting Hawks’ defense missed a switch on Tommies starting forward Carter Bjerke.
Bjerke nailed a 3-pointer to tie the game at 33 going into halftime.
The momentum started to turn for the Tommies at that point, even though UND had led for the majority of the first half.
The Hawks were unable to catch up with St. Thomas, which dropped 52 points in the second half to beat UND 85-69 at the Denny Sanford Premier Center.
“We started making mistakes and having lapses,” UND coach Paul Sather said. “We just made mistakes as the (first) half went on, and those mistakes doubled up a little bit. Second half, it just kind of spiraled.”
UND ends the year 12-21 and 5-11 in Summit League play. Sather’s team went 3-4 against the other three Dakota schools this year, grabbing two wins over South Dakota State, including in the Summit League tournament quarterfinals.
“Every year, going into the year, you want to play on the last day of the tournament with the chance to go to March Madness,” said UND guard Eli King, who played all 40 minutes of the loss. “I think that’s the goal, and there’s a fire inside of us that will continue to push us.”
UND turned the ball over 24 times in the loss, with 14 turnovers coming in the second half. St. Thomas tallied 17 steals in the game and scored 40 points off turnovers.
Treysen Eaglestaff — 24 hours removed from a 51-point, record-setting night in the quarterfinal win over No. 3 South Dakota State — had a team-high seven turnovers Saturday night.
St. Thomas had Eaglestaff’s number once again, holding him to six points in nearly 36 minutes of action. Eaglestaff was scoreless in the first half.
Eaglestaff didn’t score in UND’s second matchup of the regular season at St. Thomas on Feb. 27.
Eaglestaff has averaged 6.5 points per game against the Tommies in his career. His career-high against St. Thomas came in UND’s first game against the Tommies this season when he dropped 14 points in an eight-point UND loss.
“The job we did on Treysen Eaglestaff — we saw last night: 51 points,” St. Thomas coach Johnny Tauer said. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my entire life. I thought our guys were just very focused and trusted one another.”
King and Mier Panoam tallied 15 points and eight rebounds each in the loss. The guards combined to go 13-for-24 from the field.
Amar Kuljuhovic added 13 points on 5-for-9 shooting but tallied five turnovers.
Kendall Blue led the Tommies with 21 points on 8-for-14 shooting. Bjerke and Drake Dobbs each ended with 15 points. Dobbs went a perfect 5-for-5 from the field.
Miles Barnstable added 14 points and five rebounds.
“They made shots,” King said. “Part of it was defensive on our part, and the turnovers. They’re a team that has constant pressure throughout the full 40 minutes. For the most part, we were pretty good with it. We had a couple bad spells where it was a turnover right into a bucket. It’s hard to win games against a really good team like that.”
The Tommies face No. 1 Omaha in the Summit League championship game at 8 p.m. Sunday. Even with a win, St. Thomas is still ineligible for NCAA postseason play after its transition from Division III to Division I in 2021. Omaha will earn the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament regardless of the game outcome.
