After a rough exhibition game against Mayville, UND was looking to turn the page against a Milwaukee squad that was getting lots of hype because of the addition of 5 star recruit Patrick Baldwin Jr.
While UND fell 75-60 in the opening game, there were some good things to take away from it
1st Half: Milwaukee 36, UND 28
The story of the first half was UND slow start from the field. At one point in the first half, UND was 4-21 from the field. It wasn’t that they were bad shots, most of them were very good looks that just weren’t falling for them. If there was one particular moment that could describe their woes was at the 12:36 mark of the first half where Matt Norman made a perfect cut to the basket and was all alone for a layup and missed it. It was very tough sledding.
The good news is that UND defended well enough to keep Milwaukee from making it a runaway. With about 4:06 to go in the half, UND made their move. Behind the shooting of Matt Norman and some great free throw shooting down the stretch, UND managed to cut the lead down to 6. They could have gotten it down to 4 or 3, but they missed the shot at the end and Baldwin Jr hit a shot down the other end to get the lead up to 8 again at the half.
2nd Half: Milwaukee 75, UND 60 (39-32 Milwaukee Half Score)
The story of the half was the response from Milwaukee. Every time that UND tried to make a run in the 2nd half, Milwaukee had a response back to push the lead back up. UND made their biggest move after the 1st media timeout in the 2nd half. At that point, the teams had traded baskets and no one really gained the advantage. However, UND went on a mini 5-0 run by 2 Caleb Nero free throws and a Paul Bruns 3. That got it to 42-37 with 15:07 to go. It looked like despite the bad start, UND was going to make it all the way back. Milwaukee had other plans. Donovan Newby and Josh Thomas hit back to back 3 on Milwaukee’s next two possessions and UND came up empty on their possession in-between and the lead was back up 11. That was about as close as UND was able to get in the game. After that, Milwaukee was able to get the stop or score the bucket that kept their lead at double figures for most of the 2nd half. However, UND was able to play well enough to prevent it from being a total blowout.
The Good
-Free Throw Shooting: Hey, going 12-14 from the line is better than what they did against Mayville. Hope this is the norm going forward and not an aberration.
-Paul Bruns: The freshman guard from South Dakota made quite an impression off of the bench, scoring 13 points on 5-10 shooting, grabbing 5 rebounds, and dishing out 3 assists. If he can continue to develop, UND will have a very good player on their hands when it is all said and done.
-Rebounding: Despite the size difference, UND did outrebound Milwaukee 46-38 and only gave up 3 offensive rebounds. 6 UND players had at least 5 rebounds in the contest.
-10 turnovers, you can live with that
The Bad
-Too many open looks missed: To be honest, this was the biggest issue of the night. UND got a lot of open looks that for one reason or another, couldn’t knock down. The team started 4-21 from the floor. You are not going to win a lot of games by shooting like that. Rough performances from Nero (2-17), Sueker (3-8) and Panoam (1-5) attributed to low shooting percentage. Shooting 8-29 from 3 isn’t going to cut it either. If there is a silver lining is that I think a lot of this is fixable and better performances are coming.
-Couldn’t string together the big run: UND did manage to cut into the lead several times, however they were unable to make the shot or get the stop that they needed to get it closer. It allowed Milwaukee to push their lead back to double figures several times.
Milwaukee is going to be a solid squad in the Horizon, but you had to feel that a better shooting night from UND could have made things more interesting. With that said, I feel there are more positives than negatives and there are some good pieces to this team. Just need to see the time to mesh it all together. UND looks to pick up the pieces and move on to take on old Big Sky Rival Montana on Monday at the Betty.