The UND Men’s Basketball team opened its regular season up in a nonconference game against the Iowa Hawkeyes, who have three consecutive NCAA tournament appearances. The game went just about like anybody could have expected.  

It took the Hawkeyes just over five minutes of play to build a double-digit lead and would have over double UND’s point total after 10 minutes. 

Paul Sather’s squad saw brief flashes of success, including a pair of step back threes from Treysen Eaglestaff (So.) and BJ Omot (So.).  

The Hawks began to slowly find their rhythm offensively near the end of the first half, but Iowa firmly held a 56-32 lead at the halfway mark of the game. 

The second half was much of the same, with Iowa outclassing UND in essentially every aspect of the game. 

Omot continued to shine for the Hawks, scoring 12 points in the second half. Despite Omot’s efforts, UND would lose 110-68, ending the game with 19 turnovers. 

The Hawkeyes had six players have double digit scoring, led by 21 from Payton Sandfort. 

The Fighting Hawks had the game’s high scorer in BJ Omot, who had 24 points on 10/21 shooting. Omot added six rebounds for the Hawks. 

Tsotne Tsartsidze (Sr.) led the Hawks in rebounding, grabbing seven boards and scoring nine points. 

Elijah Brooks (So.) and Brady Danielson (5th) both added seven points off the bench for the Hawks. 

Iowa State transfer Eli King (So.) struggled in his UND debut, scoring two points on 1/9 shooting. 

While the final score might be disheartening for Fighting Hawks fans, this Iowa team is only one of two Power 5 schools scheduled to play UND this year, and five of the next six games will be played at the Betty. 

Garrett Webber is a Dakota Student General Reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].