UMC Men’s Basketball Scores 107 In Win Over Oak Hills

The University of Minnesota Crookston Golden Eagle Men’s Basketball team had a slow start but used a 31-1 run in the middle of the first half to take a big lead cruising the rest of the way for a 107-46 victory over Oak Hills Christian College (Bemidji) in a game played at Lysaker Gymnasium in Crookston.

Oak Hills jumped out to an 8-2 lead in the first four minutes of the game.  UMC settled down and had a spark with a Brian Sitzmann (R-Fr., Savage) basket which was followed by five points from Malcolm Cohen (Jr., Detroit, MI) to start a 31-1 run over an 11:01 span.  Chase Johnson (R-Soph, La Crosse, WI) added a basket and after an Oak Hills free throw UMC continued the run with five more points from Cohen, Cleary added five more points, Ben Juhl (Soph. Clive, Iowa) chipped a couple three-pointers and Sitzmann buried a three-pointer for a 33-9 lead with 7:05 left in the first half.  UMC continued their solid play in the final seven minutes of the half and took a 49-19 lead into halftime.  UMC shot 51 percent (18-35) from the field in the first half after they started the game making two of their first seven shots.

Chase Knickerbocker (Sr. Annandale) hit back-to-back three-pointers to give UMC a 40-point (62-22) lead in the first three minutes of the second half and the Golden Eagles continued to dominate and built a 72-22 lead with 15 minutes left in the game.  UMC played everybody on the bench the rest of the game and every player scored except for Gable Smith (a started that only played nine minutes in the game) and an Aaron Hollcraft (Sr. Crookston) basket with three minutes left gave the Golden Eagles their 100th point of the game.  UMC, who scored 104 points in a victory over the University of Northwestern (St. Paul) in an exhibition game earlier this year, ended the game with a 107-46 victory.  UMC shot 56 percent (38-68) from the field and made 50 percent (18-36) from three-point range. “We talk about playing for forty minutes, I thought, for the most part, our guys did that,” said UMC head coach Dan Weisse. “I don’t think we made an outside shot for the first couple minutes, but sometimes it just takes one (to go in). We’ve got to work on the little things. If you want to beat a Mankato, a Sioux Falls, or the St. Cloud States of the world you’ve got to do all the little things the right way. We want to get better every game. We want to make sure we take care of our team on both ends of the floor. The things we don’t do in the non-conference games are not going to carry over into the conference games and the things we are doing should help get us ready for conference play.”

UMC improves to 2-1 on the year and will host Valley City State on Saturday at 6:00 p.m.  Oak Hills drops to 0-7 on the season.  Both teams will play in the UMC Men’s Basketball Classic along with Valley City State and Concordia College on Saturday and Sunday.

             Brian Sitzmann goes up for a dunk in the second half of the game