ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Concordia Golden Bears men's basketball team (3-16, 2-11 NSIC) fell to Sioux Falls (13-7, 8-6 NSIC) on Saturday night at Gangelhoff Center as the Golden Bears closed out the home weekend with an 85-64 loss to the Cougars.
Concordia drops to 6-14 all-time against Sioux Falls as the Cougars have now won the last three in a row in the series. CSP also drops to 4-6 in St. Paul against USF.
Turnovers proved to be a deciding factor on the night as Sioux Falls forced 14 CSP turnovers while committing just four. The result was a massive 25-2 edge in point off of turnovers, which proved to be the difference. The Cougars also took care of business down low with a 40-26 advantage in points in the paints to aid their 54.0% (34-63) from the floor. Concordia finished the night at 40.4% (23-57) shooting. On the glass, CSP managed a 36-33 edge, including 9-4 on the offensive side. CSP also shot better from deep as they matched USF's nine made threes on five fewer attempts (19 to 24).
All nine Golden Bear players that played on the night scored points, led by 13 points from
Elliot Kane and
Bryndan Matthews. Kane gave the team a spark off the bench as he hit 5-7 from the floor and 3-4 from deep. Matthews added a team-best seven points along with four assists as well.
Avan Ward joined the duo in double digits with 11 points while chipping in six assists and four boards in the game while
Ted Brown finished a bucket shy of a double-double with eight points and a career-high 12 rebounds.
Typically a two-man offense led by Trevon Evans and Drew Guebert, the Cougars had five different players score at least 11 points in the win. Evans paced all players with 22 points on 9-17 shooting while Aaron Rothermund put up 17 points on an efficient 7-10 from the floor.
Sioux Falls came out swinging with the first five points and 10 of the first 12 in the opening three minutes as they built a comfortable lead. CSP responded with a 7-0 run to cut it to one, but the Cougars answered right back with six straight to push the lead back to seven at 16-9. The two teams traded buckets over the next few minutes as Concordia cut the deficit to four on several occasions, but they were unable to pull any closer as Sioux Falls answered every bucket. Still down four at 23-19 with 9:00 left in the half, three straight buckets on the other end gave the Cougars their first double figure lead just over a minute later. A few minutes later, USF compiled a 12-2 run to give them their largest lead of the half at 41-25 before CSP scored the final three points before the break to cut it to 41-28 through 20 minutes to play.
The lead remained comfortably in double figures in the second half as an extended 17-7 run spanning over five minutes pushed the Cougar lead all the way out to 22 at the 13:58 mark. Concordia chipped away with six straight points before pulling within 15 a few minutes after that, but Sioux Falls slowed the momentum as they did not let their advantage shrink below that mark the rest of the night. The lead reached as many as 24 before the Cougars settled with a final score of 85-64.
The Golden Bears have a quick turnaround as they remain at home this Tuesday night as they play host to Minnesota State at Gangelhoff Center at 8 p.m.
