Moments after the Lake Region State College women’s basketball team upset a tough North Dakota State College of Science squad, the men tried to do the same.
And though the Royals held pace with the Wildcats in the early going of Wednesday’s contest at Devils Lake Sports Center, they were ultimately outmatched as the score ran up in the second half. LRSC (6-14, 2-9) lost to NDSCS (20-1, 10-1) by a score of 87-53 — a result that’s not indicative of how close it was in the first half, but telling of how athletic and talented the Wildcats are, and how dominantly they closed out the game.
“I thought we had our moments. We played tough at times in the first half,” Royals head coach Jared Marshall said. “We had our chances, and then 29 turnovers and 21 offensive rebounds happen, and you can’t overcome that kind of stuff. It just doesn’t happen against a good team like that.”
The Royals had strong defensive pressure early on, and held steady with the Wildcats’ offensive attack. Three-pointers by Drew Bordeaux and Mitch Leas helped give LRSC a 12-11 lead, and a shot by Mat Mudingay nabbed back the lead after NDSCS went up 13-12.
“We were making things difficult on them. We were changing up some defensive looks,” Marshall said. “I liked what we were doing there, and we were controlling the glass. We just couldn’t find the offensive firepower.”
After the Royals briefly led 14-13, the Wildcats went on an 11-0 run. They had a versatile, quick, strong style of play that started to overwhelm LRSC.
The Royals’ last seven points of the first half were free throws, keeping them in the game only by a hair. By the halftime break, the Wildcats led 37-24.
“When we kept them in the half court, I thought we did a really nice job,” Marshall said. “Like we did the first time when we played them, where it was 59-57, I thought we did a good job and we made it tough on them. That team’s at their best when they’re in transition.”
The Royals had a 7-2 stretch in their favor to begin the second half, but things went downhill quickly after that. The Wildcats got into a rhythm and started outpacing the Royals, much like they did in the first half, but in more unrelenting fashion. LRSC, which played a tight game early on, got sloppier and more lackadaisical as the deficit widened.
Calvin Sisk, a 7-foot-2 sophomore, made a dunk with NDSCS’s point total reaching the 60s. It was part of a whopping 28-2 run where everything fell apart. The Royals missed makeable layups and turned the ball over, and the Wildcats were unforgiving on LRSC’s mistakes.
Marshall covered his hands over his face multiple times throughout the final 10 minutes or so as things really got away from them.
“I felt like all the pressure kept getting to us,” Marshall said. “The layups that we missed. And we weren’t boxing out. We weren’t doing the little things. They were supposed to be over on ball screens; we weren’t doing that. I think we just kind of mailed it in that last 10 minutes, and that’s disappointing because it’s something we talked about this week. If we didn’t come ready to go, something like this could happen. And so the challenge to them after the game that I said is, ‘How are we gonna respond Sunday?’”
About the only positive at the end of the game was Rihards Porietis making eight points off the bench. He had a three that swished in the net just after the buzzer. But it was far too little, too late for the Royals at that point, having been dominated by 21 points in the second half. It was a 34-point loss, the worst for LRSC this year.
“We don’t have a lot of room for error,” Marshall said. “So when we give other teams a lot more opportunities — they had 31 more shots than we did, they had 77 to our 46 — we can’t overcome that. We can show we can play with anybody when we play together and do what we’re supposed to do, but we just didn’t do that tonight.”
The Royals have now lost four in a row since their three-game winning streak. They’ll look to bounce back on Sunday against Williston State College (5-14, 1-9) at 3 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.
