The UND Women’s Basketball team started conference play on Monday and Tuesday Night (2nd game moved up to beat the storm) and look to get off to a great start by winning 2 home games.
Mission accomplished. UND used a tremendous defensive performance both nights and came away with those two victories. Lets dive a little bit deeper into both matchups
Monday: UND 70, UST 56
The first quarter was UND showing their strenght on both sides of the basketball. On the defensive end, they held St. Thomas to 29% shooting and on their side of the basketball, they shot the ball very well, shooting it at a 57% clip. However, UND only held a 5 point lead at the break because of 8 turnovers in the first quarter. While St. Thomas wasn’t able to take advantage of them, it prevent UND from getting a much bigger lead. Claire Orth was big in the first quarter, scoring 10 points.
The second quarter proved to be the difference in the game. UND contiuned their hot shooting and their hot defense on their way to a 26-10 margin. Two things that helped were cutting down the turnovers (from 8 to 3) and nailing a few 3 pointers in the process. The game was close for the first 4 minutes of the 2nd quarter, before UND went on a 19-2 run to finish the quarter in style. Orth, Borowicz, and Gordon were important parts of this quarter of scoring.
The rest of the game was pretty uneventful. UND got the lead to as big as 29 points in the third quarter before getting in more of the reserves that played a good chunk of the 2nd half. St. Thomas used the 4th quarter to make a bit of a comeback but the deficit was too much for them to overcome and UND finished the game with a 14 point win.
Kacie Borowicz led the team with 23 points, while Claire Orth chipped in 18 points on a near perfect shooting night from the floor (8-9 FG, 2-2 FT) and grabbed 9 rebounds. Maggie Manson found her stroke and nailed 3 3s, scoring 10 points. Freshman Nakiyah Hurst scored 9 points and grabbed 9 rebounds in 15 minutes of play.
UND held UST to 29% shooting and 5-32 from the 3 point line.
Tuesday: UND 69, WIU 53
This game was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but due to the impending blizzard, the game got moved up to Tuesday. This was a bit of a revenge game for UND from last year, where WIU went into the Betty and came away with the victory.
Like with the UST game, both teams got off to slower starts on the offensive side of the basketball. Instead of the turnover bug, UND just couldn’t put the ball into the hoop the way they were doing against St. Thomas. Nevertheless, UND leaned on their defense and that was more than enough to come away with a 14-11 lead for UND.
Much like the UST game, UND used a dominate 2nd quarter to pull away from WIU. However, this was a unique situation that occurred. WIU started the quarter with 11 points and ended the quarter… with 11 points. Yup, UND pitched a shutout in the 2nd quarter. WIU missed all 14 shots from the field and all 4 shots from the line. In my many years of watching basketball, I have never seen something like this. This also allowed UND to break a program record of lowest scoring half by an opponent with 11. To be able to do that in a basketball game is quite an accomplishment.
Offensively, UND started to pick things up, scoring 21 points in the quarter. It was a steady diet of Kacie Borowicz and Clair Orth that helped to build the lead. It was finished off by the freshman Nakiyah Hurst, who nailed back to back 3 towards the end of the quarter that really helped to put an exclaimation point on a dominate quarter. UND went into the half up 35-11.
Forunately for WIU, they offense did come alive in the 2nd half. They did outscore UND 42-34 in the 2nd half and in the third quarter, outscored UND 25-19. However, when you don’t score in the 2nd quarter, it is very difficult to come back from that. They did manage to cut the lead down to 14 with 2 minutes to go, but by that point, it was really all but over.
UND held WIU to 23% shooting from the field and 26% shooting from 3. It was yet another excellent performance by one of the best defenses in the conference. UND was 35% from the field but only 17% from 3, however went 20-26 from the free throw line to compensate.
While Borowicz had another big night (25 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists), the bigger story was the play of the freshman Hurst. The highly regarded forward from Wisconsin dropped a career high 19 points and snagged 7 rebounds in 22 minutes of play. She was able to showcase all of her offensive skills in this contest and was already coming off a solid performance against UST. These are important steps in the right direction for her and as I mentioned in my non-conference article: If Hurst can put it all together, it will allow UND to really hit their ceiling as a team and give UND a dangerous 2nd option behind Kacie.
One thing to watch: Sammiyah Hoskin suffered an injury in the first half and did not return to the court. Hopefully it isn’t a long term situation and will be back on the court soon.
Now… UND took a nice step forward and started the home part of the conference schedule at 2-0. Next up: A trip to Fargo to take on NDSU, who is also 2-0. This early season clash will be very important for these two teams who have big dreams of perhaps taking that 2nd spot behind SDSU in Sioux Falls and a win here can go along way of getting to that spot. UND hasn’t beaten NDSU in 3 years and UND fans would all agree on this.
Its time to see that streak come to an end on the 31st.