ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Concordia-St. Paul men's basketball team (1-2) exploded for 55 second-half points to claim a 94-69 victory over North Central (1-6) as interim head coach Eric Johnson picked up his first career win on Thursday at Gangelhoff Center.
 
The Golden Bears overwhelmed the Rams in the second half as they improved to 51-13 in the all-time series with NCU, winning the last 15 in a row. With the win, Johnson became the 10^th different CSP head coach to pick up a victory at the helm.
 
After being held to 38.9% from the floor and 25.0% from deep in the opening half, Concordia stormed their way to a mark of 61.1% shooting and 53.8% from beyond the arc after the break. Overall, CSP finished a solid 50.0% (36-72) from the floor and 40.0% (10-25) from three-point range in the win. The defense also took care of business as they held North Central to 38.1% (24-63) overall and 30.6% (11-36) from deep.
 
Concordia aided their effort in nearly every statistical category as they also benefitted from a 49-36 edge in rebounding, a 10-3 edge on the offensive glass and an 18-12 edge in turnovers forced. Those advantages led to a 20-7 lead in points off of turnovers, a 42-24 lead in points in the paint, a 13-3 lead in second chance points and an 18-3 lead in fast break points.
 
Junior Jordan Coblin was a big part of the second half turnaround as he scored 19 of his game-high and career-high 28 points in the final 20 minutes. He also chipped in a game-best 11 boards for the double-double while hitting 11-15 overall and 4-5 from three-point range in the win.
 
Coblin finished as one of four Golden Bears in double figures as Jacob Shields added 15 points on 7-10 shooting, Max Keefe put up 13 points on 4-6 from the floor and Carlos Barela tallied 10 points and seven rebounds on the night. Noah Kannegiesser contributed eight points, five assists and three rebounds as well.
 
Seth Fuqua was the focal point of the North Central offense as he led the squad with 25 points on 6-14 from beyond the arc while no other player scored more than eight in the loss.
 
Things got off to a slow start for the Golden Bears as the Rams scored the first seven points of the night, but the momentum quickly changed from there. CSP responded with a 12-2 run, highlighted by six straight points from Coblin, to jump ahead 12-9 nearly six minutes into the contest. North Central evened it back up with a three on the other end, but another burst, this time 14 of 17 points, gave the Golden Bears a double-digit edge at 26-15 five minutes later with 9:13 to go in the half.
 
The momentum was stalled a bit with at 8-1 NCU shrinking the lead back to four before five in a row for CSP pushed it back to nine. Concordia eventually settled with a six point advantage heading into the break as they took 39-33 edge into the locker room.
 
The lead remained in that vicinity for the first five minutes of the second half as the lead sat at 50-44 at the first media timeout, but it was all Golden Bears from there. An extended 18-7 run over the next five minutes pushed it out to 17 at 68-51 before ballooning it even further down the stretch. It eventually reached 28 in the final two minutes before Concordia closed out the game with final margin of 94-69.
 
Concordia will look to make it two wins in a row on Tuesday night at 6 p.m. at Gangelhoff Center as they play host to Northland.