UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA – Despite the final score, Head Coach Mallory Bernhard was proud of her team’s effort in the rivalry match-up against North Dakota State University.
“It’s an intense rivalry. I think that we know that,” Bernhard said. “I think our team competed really hard. So, I’m proud of the way that we competed today.”
The University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks fell to the NDSU Bison 101-85 in front of a packed crowd at the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center. But like the game against the University of South Dakota before it, it was in reach a few times; UND struggled to gain a lead.
5th-year guard Kacie Borowicz thought that the team showed bursts of greatness throughout the game.
“We had some stretches where we kind of pulled it all together. We were flowing really well on offense, and we were getting stops on the defensive end,” Borowicz said. “We made a couple of runs throughout the game.”
The first quarter was the tightest, with NDSU only leading UND by one point, but the Bison began to pull away in the second quarter.
One of the biggest difference-makers for NDSU was sophomore player Elle Evans, who had 33 points in this game.
“Coming into this game, there’s a lot of emotion with it,” Evans said. “Luckily, like I was efficient, my teammates were finding me the night and kind of have the hot hand, so I’m so happy to get it done here.”
It was Evans’s fifth game, scoring over 20 points, something that she attributes to confidence and her teammates finding her on the court.
“It’s just more mental than anything,” Evans said. “Just having the confidence and my teammates finding me. I mean, I couldn’t have done it without them. And coaches for running plays for me at times.”
NDSU got on an early scoring run, something Evans said was by design to get UND on their heels for the rest of the game, but UND held strong for the whole first quarter. They struggled in the second and were down 47-38 at halftime.
UND and NDSU were tied for scoring in the third quarter, both potting 24 points that quarter, but it was hard for UND to build momentum in the second half of the game due to the high number of fouls being called.
“We’d go on a little run, we’d get a couple of fouls called on us, we’d get in our heads a little bit,” Borowicz said. “That kind of took us out of our game.”
Even though Bernhard was proud of the competitive level her team showed in the game, she said there are a few areas she would like to clean up as the team continues into Summit League play.
“We can clean it up a little bit, do some of the things that we know we need to do. They had a lot of points off turnovers and a lot of second-chance points. Those are things that I think we can control,” Bernhard said. “We can compete with the top of this league, but we need to do it for longer stretches to be at the top.”
Maeve Hushman is a Dakota Student Sports Reporter. She can be reached at [email protected].
