WINONA, Minn. – The Concordia-St. Paul men's basketball team (5-21, 2-17 NSIC) was unable to make it two wins in a row as they fell to Winona State (11-12, 8-11 NSIC) by a score of 82-67 on Friday night.
 
The Warriors stemmed the tide in the recent series history to pick up a season split while turning around CSP's three wins in the past four meetings. The win puts Winona State at 43-6 all-time over the Golden Bears and 22-4 in Winona.
 
Three-point shooting proved to be the difference in the game as WSU knocked down an impressive 16-31 (51.6%) from beyond the arc while the Golden Bears managed just four threes on 13 attempts (30.8%) on the night. Overall, both teams finished with similar marks from the field as Winona State hit 50.9% (27-53) compared to 48.9% (22-45) for Concordia.
 
Despite the loss, CSP put forth a dominant display down low as they held a huge 34-14 edge in points in the paint as well as a 33-23 edge on the glass (10-5 on the offensive boards), leading to a 10-4 edge in second chance points.
 
Highlighting the night for the Golden Bears was the duo of Ted Brown and Bryndan Matthews as Brown scored a team-high 19 points while Matthews put up a double-double with 17 points and 10 boards. Brown was nearly perfect from the floor as he hit 8-9 from the floor while Matthews went to the line 11 times, hitting seven, to go along with three steals on the night.
 
Brandon McRoy also gave the team a boost as he hit 7-11 from the free throw line to match his career-best with 11 points in 19 minutes of action. He also added four rebounds, a pair of assists and a steal.
 
Sam Siganos joined the three in double figures has he scored 10 first half points to go along with four boards and four assists in the loss.
 
Connor Flack paced the Warriors with a game-high 21 points as he connected on 4-6 from deep while Riley Bambenek also knocked down four three to finish with 16 points in the win.
 
After falling behind 9-4 in the opening few minutes and 15-7 at the 13:42 mark, the Golden Bears battled their way back into the game. CSP rattled off a 12-2 run, including a 9-0 stretch to close it out, to take the lead at 19-17 just over five minutes later. The lead wouldn't last long as WSU regained a four point advantage at 24-20, but once again Concordia fought back to jump ahead 28-26. A three gave Winona State the lead before a pair of Matthews' free throws put the Golden Bears back in front 30-29. That would be Concordia's last lead of the night as five straight points and seven of eight gave the Warriors a 36-31 lead at the break.
 
Concordia closed the gap to three with a bucket from Brown to start the second half, but the Warriors quickly put it out of reach with an extended 25-4 run capped off with a 17-0 burst to push it out to 61-37 to give them their largest lead of the night. The next six points went in favor of the Golden Bears to cut it below 20 but the lead sat in that area for much of the next few minutes. CSP did manage a late push to close the gap to 13 with a minute and a half to play but were unable to get any closer in an 82-67 loss.
 
The Golden Bears will look to return to the win column tomorrow night as they travel to Fayette to take on Upper Iowa at 6 p.m.