UMC MEN’S BASKETBALL FALTERS IN SECOND HALF IN 80-56 LOSS TO GOLDEN BEARS

The University of Minnesota Crookston Golden Eagle Men’s Basketball team had a solid first half and led by two points, but the Concordia-St. Paul Golden Bears had a great second half and pulled away for an 80-56 victory in the season opener for both teams at Gary Senske Court at Lysaker Gymnasium in Crookston.

FIRST HALF – 
UMC jumped out to a 6-0 lead with back-to-back three-pointers from Ibu Jassey-Demba (Sr. Birmingham, England) and Brian Sitzmann (Jr. Savage). Concordia-St. Paul responded with a three-pointer of their own before Sitzmann responded with a layup and Josh Dilling (Fresh. Oshkosh, Wis.) buried another Golden Eagle three-pointer for an 11-3 lead five minutes into the game. “At the beginning of the game we were keeping them out of the paint,” said UMC Coach Dan Weisse. “We were hitting some shots and we were playing pretty well.”
Concordia-St. Paul slowly chipped away at the UMC lead and got within a three-point deficit (22-19) with less than eight minutes to go in the half.  UMC answered in a big way by going on an 11-4 run behind a dunk from Leonard Dixon (Jr. Damascus, Oregon), an Ethan Channel (Jr. Beaverton, Oregon), five points from Georges Darwiche (Jr. Bucharest, Romania), a Quintin Winterfeldt (Soph. Waupun, Wis.) dunk for a 33-23 lead with five minutes to go.
Concordia-St. Paul battled back over the last five minutes of the half to tie the game at 34, but Darwiche scored on an acrobatic layup with 39 seconds left to give UMC a 36-34 lead going into halftime. “I like how we played in the first half,” said Coach Weisse. “We played decent defense, moved the ball around and hit some shots.  It was a good first half.”

SECOND HALF-
Concordia-St. Paul started the second half with a noticeable energy advantage in the second half.  They were flying all over the court, playing suffocating defense, and were hitting shots.  The Golden Bears went on a 32-8 run in the first 10-plus minutes of the second half to take a commanding 70-46 lead.  “The game got away on us.  When things went haywire we didn’t handle it well,” said Coach Weisse. “We didn’t keep them out of the paint and they had too many easy baskets.  The game was decided with all their uncontested layups.”
The teams played even the rest of the way and Concordia-St. Paul coasted to an 80-56 victory.  “It was disappointing in the second half, but we have a lot of new guys playing their first Division II basketball game,” said Coach Weisse. “We saw some good things from our team and we couldn’t make a big shot and we couldn’t stop them when we needed to.  We will make some minor adjustments and get ready to get back to work tomorrow.  Concordia-St. Paul has a good team and they are very athletic.”

UMC drops to 0-1 and Concordia-St. Paul improves to 1-0 on the year. The teams will play again at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday and you can hear the game on KROX Radio.