GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- North Dakota's hot first-half shooting put the Mavericks into a hole that they couldn't climb out of and the Fighting Sioux held off a furious second-half rally by UNO to notch a 73-65 North Central Conference win Saturday night.
The loss evened the Mavs' league mark at 1-1 and dropped them tp 10-8 before hosting the 9-6, 1-0 Sioux again on Thursday at Sapp Fieldhouse.
"When you give good shooting teams open shots, they're going to make them," UNO coach
Derrin Hansen said. "And that's waht they did."
The Sioux hit 14 of 26 first half shots for 53.8 percent, while the Mavericks, who got good looks at the basket, hit just 8 of 31 for 25.8 percent. The result was a 16-point run by UND that erased a 10-7 Mav lead and eventually produced a 34-21 halftime edge.
UNO appeared to recover the second half and got back into the game as
Ryan Curtis scored on a dunk and
Michael Jenkins connected on back-to-back shots from behind the arc to trim the North Dakota lead to 43-35 with 12:30 left.
Chris DeSpain hit two free shots to climax the 10-point run and bring the Mavs within six with 11:50 left.
"Right there, I felt we were back in the ball game," Hansen said. "But we couldn't get the stops when we needed them and I think we ran out of gas a little trying to catch up. We really played hard."
UND's Jimmy Hoy scored on a tip-in and Daniel Harkins tallied on a three-point play to quiet the comeback.
The Mavericks had energy for one more comeback in the final two minutes.
Calvin Kapels hit two free throws and
Quantel Murphy and
Denny Johnston scored on layups before Kapels converted a three-point play with 42 seconds left. That cut the UND lead to six again at 67-61.
But Josh Doyle hit 10 of the final 11 points for the Sioux from the free throw line to preserve the lead for UND.
Kapels led UNO with 15 points and five assists and
Ryan Curtis had 14 points and 10 rebounds.
Evean Lindahl led the Sioux with 17 points and Doyle added 15. The Sioux finished the game shooting 51.1 percent from the field, while UNO, which improved to 45.2 percent the second half, shot 35.5 percent for the game.
