Treysen Eaglestaff (Photo by Noah Clooten)
GRAND FORKS — Two hours before gametime, Treysen Eaglestaff was shooting hoops all by himself. He wore headphones and a stoic expression.
The soon-to-be-sold-out crowd had yet to arrive.
Four hours later, after scoring a career-high 40 points in a 97-90 loss to No. 6 Alabama, all Eaglestaff could think about were the shots that he didn’t land.
“Those last shots that I missed are really sitting with me right now,” Eaglestaff said. “Because it’s obviously the big ‘what if.’ We could have won that game.”
Excitement was abound for Alabama’s visit to North Dakota on Wednesday — for a multitude of reasons, front and center being Grant Nelson’s homecoming.
But what fans and analysts on both sides seemed to concede was that it would be a rollover. Alabama is coming off a Final Four run, and retained most of its core players this year. UND, a Summit League team, had lost its last three games and entered Wednesday with a 4-8 record. Alabama was favored by 25 points.
An unranked UND team put a scare on a national championship contender.
“I think some of our young guys, particularly, overlooked this team. Saw some of the losses they had,” Alabama head coach Nate Oats said. “They don’t understand Division I basketball. If you don’t show up, you’re not gonna win.”
The game had a special meaning for Eaglestaff, too. Like Nelson, Eaglestaff is a former North Dakota Mr. Basketball winner. The junior won the award in 2022 as a Bismarck High School star, two years after Nelson and two years before Deng Deng.
“I think we have a lot of talent here that doesn’t get shown a lot,” Eaglestaff said. “Because of population and just bigger schools, I guess.”
With a crowd full of North Dakota locals and a national TV audience, Eaglestaff put forth the best performance of his career. He scored nearly twice as many points as any Alabama player and surpassed 1,000 for his career. He connected on eight three-pointers in 18 chances.
“Can’t sleep on those North Dakota boys. They can really hoop,” Nelson said. “Our scouting report was pretty much around [Eaglestaff], so I feel like we let ourselves down. We’ve got a lot to learn. We’re gonna watch video and see what we can do better. Not let him get hot at the beginning, giving him confidence. But he’s a great player, and he’ll make a lot of money playing basketball.”
An early three by Eaglestaff put UND ahead 11-6. It was way too soon for Alabama fans to get nervous, but it was an immediate punch right away for the Fighting Hawks.
The Crimson Tide took a timeout at 11:25, nearly midway through the first half already. They trailed 19-12 and were 0-of-8 from the three-point line.
“We played awful pretty much the whole game,” Nelson said. “We didn’t take these guys as serious; I was telling [my teammates], this is a big game on their home court, and we’ve gotta come in and take these guys serious. They’re playing for a lot. So, I mean, we got yelled at, like we should have. I’m sure we’ll continue to get yelled at the rest of this week.”
Aden Holloway and Labaron Philon finally landed threes to trim the deficit to 21-18. But UND responded with a 6-0 run, culminating in Eaglestaff’s second three-pointer.
Alabama eventually squeaked ahead 33-32 on a Mark Sears triple. But Eaglestaff responded with a layup to put the Hawks back on top. At halftime, UND led 38-35. It was beginning to look less like a fluke and more like the makings of an all-time upset if the Crimson Tide didn’t figure something out soon.
They turned the ball over 13 times in the first half, compared to nine on UND’s end.
“Wake up. Play harder. Quit turning the ball over. Get locked in,” Oats said of his halftime message. “Tried to make some defensive adjustments on Eaglestaff; obviously, they weren’t very good because he killed us in the second half.”
Eaglestaff had a game-high 14 points in the first half. But he exploded even more in the second half, putting up a whopping 26 to reach the 40-point plateau. The game was still tied with as little as 1:48 left on the clock.
Eaglestaff’s points per game on the season rose by nearly two, up to 20.2.
“We knew he was a good player; he was averaging 18 on the year coming in, the leading scorer in the Summit,” Oats said. “But for him to get 40 on us speaks to how talented he is, but speaks to our defense… We’ve gotta do a better job on guys like that.”
Two more Eaglestaff threes were sandwiched by a Jarin Stevenson three to open the second half.
Down 47-45, Alabama finally found a groove and went on a 13-0 run. But Eaglestaff and co. just went back to work. Eaglestaff connected on a three to make it 66-61, and back-to-back jumpers by the junior clawed the deficit to 69-65.
Eaglestaff’s sixth triple gave him 30 points. It made it a 71-68 game with less than eight and a half minutes left.
“I’ve known him for a while,” Nelson said. “I played him when he was here and I was at North Dakota State. I knew he was a great player.”
Alabama widened the gap to 78-70. But UND struck back with an 8-0 run — capped by threes from Eli King and, yet again, Eaglestaff.
The game was tied with 4:23 to go. The Betty was eardrum-bursting loud. The whole country was enamored with a kid from North Dakota named Treysen Eaglestaff.
“It might sound crazy: It’s like a movie. It’s like a dream. It doesn’t seem real,” Eaglestaff said. “It’s like your heart stops for a second. Your body just freezes for that one second at the highest pitch. The noise is just a crazy feeling.”
Eaglestaff made a basket and two free throws to keep UND within one point with less than three minutes left. King’s second three-pointer tied it at 85-85 with 2:15 to go.
It was the other North Dakota kid — the one most people were there to see — who put Alabama back on top, 87-85. Nelson gave the Tide some breathing room, too, by converting a pair of free throws. UND trailed 91-85 with 35 seconds left.
The energy evaporated from inside The Betty.
“We knew how tough the game was gonna be,” said Dariyus Woodson, who scored 15 off the bench for UND. “We never downplayed it. We know Alabama. We know how good they are. But we also know that we’re good, and how good we can play when we play hard.”
It was strikingly apparent that the Hawks’ attempts at a stunner would fall just short at that point. But their in-state hero, the relentless Eaglestaff, gave them one last spark of hope with his eighth three-pointer, shooting it from the corner with 21 seconds left.
It was that shot that hit the 40 and 1,000 marks, all with one swoosh of the net.
“Going into the game, I knew I was 40 away from 1,000,” Eaglestaff said. “And I was like, ‘I’m probably gonna get it at Waldorf [two games away for UND]. I’m not even worried about that right now.’ I’m like, ‘Let’s just go out there and play my hardest.’ I had a lot of fatigue that game; somehow I hit 40. God is great, and I hit my 1,000th.”
The fans who tuned in to watch Nelson stayed to watch Eaglestaff. So not only was North Dakota well-represented in Nelson, who had a great game in his own right with 23 points and 10 rebounds, but it showcased another one of its top talents in Eaglestaff. And a scrappy underdog UND team showed it could compete with one of the nation’s top squads.
“I opened my phone right inside the locker room,” Eaglestaff said after the game. “I saw like 500 followers and maybe 3,000 comments or so. I don’t know. I saw some. I didn’t even look. I shut my phone off. A bunch of my guys and my family are calling me right now.
“Just trying to soak in the moment. Obviously, that was a great experience, and a really cool thing for college basketball in general, to have that good team come here. So I’m just really grateful for that experience. And I’ll look at my phone later, because there are other things in life that are more important.”
“Like sleep,” UND head coach Paul Sather chimed in.
The two of them shared a laugh.
“I just really want to see my mom,” Eaglestaff said, “because there’s a lot of emotions hitting me right now.”
Both teams can go home knowing they’ve inspired the next generation of kids, particularly Eaglestaff and Nelson, who made North Dakota proud on Wednesday.
The overlooked state got a little more of the national spotlight for once.
“I’m glad that there was a lot of children in the stands today that got to see that experience,” Eaglestaff said. “Because I know damn well, if I saw that as a kid, I’m going to the gym every day at 6 a.m. Like, ‘Mom, I’m making the league.’ I would have that urge… Hopefully some of them can go back home and pick up a basketball tomorrow and be like, ‘I want to go play like these guys.’ And that’s really the bigger picture, and that’s really what basketball is all about for me.”
It ended up being a special night for both Nelson and Eaglestaff, and for a UND team that got to show what it can do against a premier talent.
It was a loss for the Hawks, but a triumphant victory for the state of North Dakota.
“You get a North Dakota kid that has that kind of night against Alabama,” Sather said. “It’s surreal. It’s folklore-type stuff.”
