Concordia university outrebounded north central university 57-26 en route to a convincing 112-77 victory on tuesday evening at the gangelhoff center in st. Paul, minn. Senior ty thomas led a balanced cu scoring attack with 23 points and eight rebounds in just 16 minutes of playing time. The win for the bears snaps a five game losing streak and pushes north central's losing streak to six games.

ncu, located in downtown minneapolis near the metrodome, played a strong first half but the golden bears rattled off seven unanswered points to close out the half to push their lead to 10 points at the half, 51-41, after trailing by as much as 10 points early, when ncu led 18-8 at the 14:44 mark.

it was smooth sailing from there for concordia as they scored the first six points of the second half, making it a 13-0 run. The run didn't end with the ncu field goal as the golden bears dashed out for the next eight points. The total run was 21-2 and spanned 6:01, pushing the score from 44-41 with 2:42 to play in the first half to 66-43 with 16:41 to play in the game.

concordia pushed the lead as high as 38 points and reached the 100 point milestone with 4:50 to play when junior forward cortez forte canned a pair of free throws, pushing the score to 101-67.

thomas finished 9-15 from the field, 1-2 from three-point territory and 4-4 at the line and added three assists and a steal.

three other golden bears reached double-figures, with junior forward marlon walker scoring 15 points with six rebounds on perfect 6-6 shooting. Junior guard james sarbacker added 14 points, five rebounds, two assists, a block and a steal in 15 minutes off the bench. He shot 5-7 from the field and drained 4-6 from behind the arc. Forte was the fourth cu player in double-figures with 10 points on 3-4 shooting, including a perfect 4-4 at the stripe. He also gathered five rebounds in 13 minutes.

everyone who suited up scored for the bears, including freshman gaurd paul reineck, who was followed to the arena with his own student cheering section. Reineck responded by hitting a pair of three-pointers, finishing with six points in 10 minutes.

while four players reached double-figures in scoring, three more were within a field goal of reaching the 10-point plateau: junior point guard joey peel, sophomore guard james metcalf and senior forward colby swanson all finished with eight points. Peel also had three rebounds and a pair of assists, metcalf added five rebounds and a pair of assists and swanson grabbed six rebounds.

two golden bears also had five assist-performances, sophomore guard jason birr and junior point guard seborn yancy.

while the golden bears were using a balanced scoring output, the rams went to their go-to guy, cj johnson, who lit concordia up for 40 points, canning 10-18 from downtown and nabbing four steals. Johnson played all 40 minutes and scored over half of his team's points.

the only other ram in double-figures was jeremy watkins, who scored 17 of his 18 points in the first half.

concordia finished the game shooting 60.6% (43-71) from the field while holding ncu to just 31.5% (23-73). The bears drained ten three-pointers for the first time this season in 26 attempts (38.5%) while the rams connected for 14-41 of their threes (34.1%).

the rebounding and down low presence of the concordia post game proved too much for the rams to overcome, as cu outscored ncu 56-12 in the paint and 57-6 off the bench.

concordia returns to nsic action this saturday evening when they travel to take on #16 winona state.