On Tuesday Oct. 24, the University of North Dakota held their annual Basketball Fan Fest. At the event, fans were able to see the women’s team show off their skills during a set of drills and a three-point contest. For fans of the men’s team, they were able to see a scrimmage and a dunk contest.

The event started with the women’s team displaying their skills with a set of drills. This helped highlight all the players’ skills to the fans. After the women’s team finished their drills, the men’s team played a scrimmage to show the fans what they look like in a game scenario. The game was gray versus white, with white coming out on top 38-32.

The next event of the night was the women’s three-point contest. It consisted of four shooters with two rounds where the top two shooters advanced to round two to become the 2017-18 women’s basketball three-point champion. The two shooters that advanced to the championship round were junior guard Jill Morton and junior guard Melissa Dailey with 14 and 12 three-pointers made respectively. The championship round ended with Melissa Dailey becoming the women’s three-point champion making 17 three pointers over Jill Morton’s 11.

After the women’s three-point contest, four players from the men’s team showed off their dunking skills in a dunk contest. The dunk contest consisted of sophomore forward Carter Brooks, junior guard Jafar Kinsey, junior forward Josh Collins and junior guard Geno Crandall. Like the three-point contest, the dunk contest consisted of two rounds, with the scores from each round added together. The highest score at the end of the two rounds would be crowned the 2017-18 men’s dunk contest champion.

At the end of the first round Collins was in the lead with a score of 49, one-point shy of a perfect score. The other scores were 42 for Brooks, 43 for Kinsey and 44 for Crandall. The second round ended with scores of 36 for Brooks, bringing his end total to 78, 46 for Kinsey bringing his end total to 89 and 43 for Collins bringing his end total to 92. Finishing the night with a perfect score of 50, Crandall was named the 2017-18 men’s dunk champion with a final score of 94. This wasn’t something new for Crandall, having won the competition both last year and in his freshman year.

After all the events were played, all players from the teams were available for autographs. This wasn’t the only thing available to fans however, a half-court shot attempt could be made by fans over the age of 18. If successful they would receive season tickets to the men’s and women’s home games.

Overall, this event was really great to help introduce and show off the 2017-18 rosters of the UND men’s and women’s basketball teams. It should provide the fans with some hope that both teams will build off what they accomplished last season.

Cole Johnson is an sports writer for Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected]