17-24

Offseason Starter

The unorthodox nature of this year continues to unfold. The latest piece to it being that the 🏐 team returned to the court for the first time since November 2019. Even with the extended hiatus they didn't soft-pedal the return, with North Dakota coming to the BBF for a pair. They fell behind right away on Friday but rallied thanks to a balanced attack, frequently setup by Kelley Johnson who finished with 47 assists. In the rematch they took care of business in straight-sets, freshman Ali Hinze finished with the team lead in kills.

On the other court, NDSU hosted Denver. The women opened the quad with a 62-60 loss in which Ryan Cobbins finished as the lone player in double-digits. She & Emily Dietz each finished 1 rebound shy of double-doubles, had Dietz gotten her 10th point. Missed FTs prevented the sweep. Gotta make FTs!

Without Maleeck Harden-Hayes for the pair of games, the men faced a short-bench on Friday. The core four of Kreuser (21 & 10), Cook (16), Griesel (13) & Eady (10) powered them to a 70-58 win.

They returned to the court with the added benefit of Donald Carter III's debut from a broken leg. Along with Dezmond McKinney that gives them another traditional point guard to help them down the stretch. Griesel had a quiet day offensively but the slack was picked up by Grant Nelson with 11 and Jaxon Knotek's 12 off the bench while the other three from Friday did similar work in leading the way to the 84-58 victory.

Likewise, the women bounced back nicely on Saturday. Deitz's 17 paced the way but Heaven Hamling was right off that with 16. Cobbins added 11 and had nine rebounds again as they rolled to a 74-56 win.

Which only leaves the Track & Field team. They were in Brookings and both the men & the women continued the tradition of domination over the Bunnies.

The 🤼 were set to compete in a tri-angular today in San Luis Obispo but CA put the kibosh on that.

Moorhead State had an extra-compressed weekend of activity as they also dealt with cancelations. Both women's 🏀 games, a swim meet at SW MN St. and Sunday's 🤼 matches against U-Mary all were unable to happen as planned.

Which left the men as the solo act against Duluth on Friday evening.

A 21-point performance by Bryce Irsfeld lead the way, with Lorenzo McGhee's 19 helping them finish ahead 93-76. The bulk of the rest of the damage came from Gavin Baumgartner (17) & Dane Zimmer (12). The rematch proved to be considerably closer.

Zimmer's career-high 27 carried the day but was accompanied by six others with at least nine points. In addition to McGhee's 14 & Irsfeld's 13 was Baumgartner with 11, Jesse Bergh with 10 & Gabe Myren's nine. The last two did so in reserve minutes but all five finished behind Gatdoar Kueth's 15. They needed every bit of the balanced contributions to hold-off Duluth's equal attack. The Dragons finished with the edge, 103-95.

The one other event on Saturday took place in Bismarck as the Track & Field team competed with great success against the Marauders of Mary!

In classic, Minnesota fashion the Pups found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Despite playing one of the best quarters that they will all season in the second, Orlando was able to work it's way back. Then, following a pair of missed free throws, Cole Anthony buried a three to give them the one point victory.

MN followed that up with a listless Friday night performance against Atlanta.

They managed to get back into the win column for the second time in the last 13 games yesterday against playoff-hopeful New Orleans without Towns who remains out with the virus or Russell who had a pre-planned "rest" night. They finished with eight players scoring at least nine points while outdoing NOLA in every statistical category. Truthfully it should have been a more convincing victory than it was but made did it still feel good!!

While it's not exactly a franchise-destiny changing move, Minnesota did finally add someone new to their roster. For one year they'll have long-time veteran starter J.A. Happ to bolster the back-end of the rotation. With a litany of impact players yet to be signed Minnesota should be able to improve the roster more substantially than that before reporting to Spring Training. But it's just nice that they made some kind of move already!

Fargo had a relatively light week with only two games, but the brevity balanced out the extra weight that came with the visit by Des Moines. Fargo is a ways from being a sure thing for the conferences, even with their current lead and DM is one of the teams looking to unseat them.

Game 1 started with a four-goal first period in which the teams traded scores - Des Moines first than Fargo and repeated. Just 25 seconds into the second period, Brennan Boynton missed the third goal which proved to be the decider. One more was added late in the third on an open net.

Likewise, Des Moines opened the rematch with a goal early on but Fargo didn't score until late in the second. They regained the lead halfway through the final period but Nick Strom evened it again for Fargo with less than two minutes to go in the game. Two and a half minutes into overtime Cody Monds got a pass from Austin Wong and didn't miss his second score of the game to win it. You can't draw up a win much better than that!

The week of prep action began with an inter-division clash between the girls from Kindred and Davies on Monday. The next day South's were at North for a renewal of that old rivalry. Then, on Thursday, Barnesville made the drive to Glyndon for one more girls game. Those came in addition to the typical number of developments since last Sunday - which are several!