This weekend, UND traveled down to Boca Raton, Florida to participate in the Paradise Classic. It was a bit of a mixed bag of success for the Hawks, as they went 1-2 to move their record to 2-3 on the season.
Game 1: UND 74. Troy 72
The major story of the game was the play of one Mitchell Sueker. He had a dominant first half, scoring 18 of a game high 25 points to give UND a good start to the first half. He scored their first 9 points in the contest, then had personal runs of 5 and 4 later in the first half. Then the reinforcements came behind Brian Mathews and Caleb Nero, who scored 5 and 6 points respectively in the first half.
The start of the 2nd half was a dream for UND, they were hitting shots from everywhere. Bentiu Panoam got the half started with back to back 3s, but Matt Norman took over the game, scoring 12 points in about 3 minutes to help push the UND lead up to 12 points. Troy attempted a couple of times to cut the lead down but UND managed to push the lead back up to 10 points with 4 minutes to go. Then Troy made their biggest push of the game, going on a 9-0 run to cut the lead down to a point. Sueker and Nero wasn’t about to let UND lose, Sueker hit a big bucket with about a minute left and then hit 2 big free throws with 9 seconds left. Nero did the rest to seal the game with 4 free throws in the last 9 seconds to give UND the 74-72 win.
In addition to the 25 points, Sueker grabbed 4 rebounds. UND had 3 players in double figures as Norman (13 points, 5 assists) and Nero (12 points, 4 assists, 0 turnovers) were the other 2. Bentiu Panoam hit 3 3’s to chip in 9 points. Big T led the team in rebounding with 9 boards.
Game 2: Florida Atlantic 98, UND 79
This game provided UND with their best shooting performance of the year. The problem? Florida Atlantic was just a little bit better shooting the ball in the 2nd half, shooting 60% from the field and from 3 to full away from UND for a 98-79 victory.
The big story here for UND was the shooting of Caleb Nero. He lead UND with 23 points, but on 9-16 shooting and going 5-10 from 3. He continued to do his service of taking care of the ball, only turning over the ball once while dishing out 3 assists. He also grabbed 6 rebounds. The one thing that was missing from Nero was his scoring, and he finally was able to show in at all 3 levels.
Matt Norman had another good night shooting, knocking down 3 3’s, scoring 11 points. Paul Bruns and Brendan Howard also scored in double figures off of the bench, scoring 11 and 10 points respectively.
UND played well in the first half and kept the game close. However, the turning point seemed to happen right before the half. UND had the ball down 1 and going for the last shot. Caleb Nero was driving the ball down when it was stolen by Michael Forrest, who then took the ball down and scored before the buzzer, to give the Owls a 3 points lead. That seemed to be the spark they needed as they jumped UND in the 2nd half and went on a 18-4 run in the first 5 minutes of the ball game and UND was unable to recover from that gut punch.
Game 3: UT Martin 77, UND 72
In the final game of the tournament for UND, it was a bit of a downer as the 3 point shots just weren’t falling for UND and UT Martin was hitting their shots and the Skyhawks were able to come away with a 77-72 win.
It really was all about the 3 point shot, UND was able to get several good looks but could not get them to fall. They went 1-10 from 3 in the first half, but only improved slightly in the 2nd half, going 3-16. Outside of Nero, no one else made more than 1 shot. Unfortunately, UND was unable to dominate at the free throw line to make up for the difference. They also struggled to make that one big run, similar to the Milwaukee game. UT Martin always seemed to come up with the one big shot to keep pushing the lead. KK Curry and KJ Simon had big games for the Skyhawks, scoring 24 and 21 points each, giving UND problems all day long. The 2nd half, they basically hit every 3 point shot (okay, they went 5 of 7, it just seemed like it). Including 2 big ones towards the end of the game that proved to be the difference.
Nero had another big game, scoring 20 points and grabbed 5 rebounds. His 9-16 from the field looked great, but went 2-8 from 3. Another bright spot was Big T, who had his first breakout game of the year, scoring 13 points and was 1 rebound away from getting a double-double. He went 6-7 from the field. Hope that this is the start for T to get things going. Sueker was the third player in double figures with 11, but once again struggled to stay on the court with foul trouble.
There are certainly a lot of good things that went down this weekend, but a couple of concerns have begun to pop up, particularly on the defensive side, giving up a high percentage of 3 pointers. This is something that needs to be improved upon if UND is going to make a move. There were several instance where the shooter was wide open and the UND defender would not close out. We have also seen the good and the bad in regards to shooting. Hopefully we will see more of the good than the bad going forward.
UND stays in Florida as they take on Florida International before heading to Manhattan, Kansas to take on Kansas State on Sunday.