ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Concordia-St. Paul men's basketball team (9-10, 4-9 NSIC) nearly led from wire-to-wire in a 92-84 win over Bemidji State (10-9, 6-7 NSIC) on Friday night at Gangelhoff Center.
 
The Golden Bears did not trail the entire night as they held off the Beavers to pull within one win of .500 in the all-time series, moving to 19-20 in 39 meetings, including a 14-6 mark on their home court. CSP also improved to 7-2 in games they scored 85 or more points and 4-0 in games they scored 90 or more.
 
CSP took care of the basketball as they turned it over just four times, resulting in two BSU points, while they scored 15 points on eight turnovers for the Beavers. Concordia also received production from across the lineup with five different players scoring in double figures and eight scoring at least five. The Golden Bear bench provided a spark as they outscored Bemidji State's reserves 33-11.
 
Concordia had the advantage from beyond the arc and at the free throw line as they hit 13 threes while holding BSU to eight while they also hit 17-21 (81.0%) from the free throw line compared to 8-12 (66.7%) for BSU.
 
Marcus Skeete paced the squad with 24 points and eight rebounds on an efficient 9-13 shooting and 5-6 from the free throw line in the win. Ben Kopetzki also filled the stat sheet with 17 points, six assists, three boards and two steals while Sean Mathieu came off the bench to provide 12 points, five assists, five rebounds and three made threes in the victory.
 
Ian Sluice chipped in 13 points and four rebounds while John Grigsby scored 10 points on the night.
 
BSU's John Sutherland led all players with 28 points and 12 rebounds in the loss.
 
Kopetzki came out firing with the first eight points of the night for the Golden Bears as he helped the squad to a quick 10-2 advantage just over two minutes into the contest. The Beavers trimmed it to three at 12-9, but CSP responded with the next seven in a row to spark an 18-6 run to build their largest lead of the half at 30-15 at the midway point of the period. Bemidji State answered with an 8-0 run of their own before slowly chipping away for much of the rest of the half. Concordia briefly had the lead back in double figures at 44-34 with 3:33 left on the clock, but nine straight points for BSU shrunk the lead to one before Grigsby grabbed five of the last eight points before the break to bring the score to 49-46 in favor of the hosts after 20 minutes of play.
 
The Beavers managed to tie the score four times in the opening five and a half minutes of the seconds, including at 61-61 with 14:24 to play, but the Golden Bears regained their advantage from there. Skeete scored the next five points to kick off an extended 21-11 run that saw CSP's lead return to double digits at 82-72 with seven minutes remaining in the game. Bemidji State managed to cut the lead in half, but that would be all the closer they would get as Concordia maintained a lead of two possessions or more the rest of the night while holding BSU to just one made field goal in the final two and a half minutes in a 92-84 victory.
 
Concordia will look to make it a 2-0 weekend at Gangelhoff Center tomorrow evening with a 5:30 p.m. tip-off against Minnesota Crookston.