The Lake Region State College men’s basketball team fell just short Sunday. Despite effort, resilience and a game that came down to the final minute, the Royals couldn’t do quite enough to surpass that hump and beat a United Tribes Technical College team ranked higher than them in the Mon-Dak Athletic Conference.
The Royals (6-13, 2-8) lost 86-81 to the Thunderbirds (9-8, 6-5) at Devils Lake Sports Center.
“We’re out there battling. We played really hard,” head coach Jared Marshall said. “We just didn’t make plays down the stretch. We had turnovers that cost us down the stretch; missed opportunities, missed rebounds, things like that. Credit to them. They made some big shots down the way, and we didn’t.”
Despite a tight finale, the game wasn’t necessarily neck and neck from the beginning. Harrison Raynor and Ginuwine Tropnas combined for an alley-oop in the opening minutes that got the Royals off to a flashy start, but UTTC followed with a 15-2 run.
LRSC shot right back with an 11-3 run. The Royals were down just 23-20.
“They had a couple of runs where we could have rolled over, or we could have quit, and we didn’t,” Marshall said. “I think it was just a game of runs today.”
The Thunderbirds relied more on threes, especially as the first half went on. At one point, UTTC’s last four baskets were all of the three-point variety, spread out sporadically. It was enough to keep them in the lead, 29-24, with 7:12 left in the first half. The Thunderbirds made 9-of-27 three-point attempts in the game, compared to 3-of-14 by LRSC.
“We countered it by trying to hammer them on the inside and hit the free throw line,” Marshall said.
Contributions from Noah Bonick, Rihards Porietis and Blessed Barhayiga helped the Royals tie it at 31 apiece — with Barhayiga making the tying shot. Jacolby Pearson immediately followed with a three for UTTC.
Down five, Porietis missed a layup, but Barhayiga got the rebound and scored. Tropnas nabbed a rebound as well, scoring to get LRSC within a 40-39 margin. The 6-foot-9 freshman Tropnas made six straight points for the Royals.
“When he’s on, he’s on, right?” Marshall said of Tropnas. “I think his last few games have been some of his most complete games all year if you look back at it. The switch has flipped, and he’s figuring it out. He can do a lot of special things for us.”
Barhayiga followed Tropnas’s run with another rebound and basket of his own, continuing a back-and-forth match that put LRSC up 43-42. But after the Royals went down 44-43, Marshall lectured his team during the timeout about turnovers, bellowing “You can’t do that! Not in this type of game!”
“We had 22 [turnovers] tonight. It’s been a problem all year for us,” Marshall said. “We’ve done a really nice job the last few games cleaning it up, and we let the pressure get to us. Twenty-two is a lot, and a lot of it is just stuff within our control, throwing crosscourt passes and things like that. A game like this, you knew it was gonna come down to one possession here or there.”
The teams traded field goals to end the half, and went into the break with UTTC leading 46-45. Tropnas and Drew Bordeaux were tied for LRSC’s lead in scoring with eight points each.
Both squads came out playing largely the same game in the second half, with the Thunderbirds going for three and the Royals relying more on quick baskets and free throws. The Royals made 18 of their 28 free throw attempts in the game, an area Marshall said he wished they could have capitalized better on.
UTTC went up as big as 59-52. But a 10-0 run, started by five straight points from Tropnas, got the Royals back in it once again. Two successful free throws by Mat Mudingay tied it at 61, and a Porietis free throw put them in the lead. Porietis followed with a layup that gave LRSC a three-point cushion.
“Rihards came in and did some good stuff for us,” Marshall said. “I thought he was a real energy guy for us off the bench. We gotta find a way to work him in more and have him be more consistent for us.”
Bordeaux and Raynor each made a go-ahead three, responding to lead-changing shots from the other side. Barhayiga added two for comfort to give LRSC a 76-73 lead with 3:52 to go, but with the lead down to one point, he missed two free throws and Tropnas rebounded but couldn’t quite tip it in the basket. Cayden Redfield put UTTC up 77-76.
Tropnas kept his athletic, energetic style of play going, and tied the game with a free throw. The teams traded baskets to keep it tied at 79 apiece, but Redfield came through again with a steal and a three.
All of a sudden, the Royals trailed 83-79 with 44 seconds left.
They couldn’t make enough magic happen in those final 44 seconds, getting just a field goal from Tropnas to cap their scoring. It was a two-possession game on their final chance, leaving them with nothing to do but chuck the ball at the hoop and accept defeat, despite how hard they’d worked all game to stay alive and give themselves a chance to win it.
“We gotta keep showing that toughness and that grit that we have, and keep battling,” Marshall said. “Man, I wanted this one really bad for our guys. We kind of needed it a little bit. We just can’t quit.”
The Royals’ next game is at home against North Dakota State College of Science (19-1, 10-1) on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.
Joseph “Mojo” Hill is a reporter covering Lake Region sports for the Devils Lake Journal. Contact him on Twitter @mojohill22 or at jhill@devilslakejournal.com for any tips, questions or story ideas.
