JAMESTOWN, N.D. – The Concordia-St. Paul men's basketball team (11-6, 6-5 NSIC) overcame an early 13-point deficit to beat Jamestown (9-8, 7-4 NSIC) 71-69 in Northern Sun play at Harold Newman Arena on Friday evening.
After a slow first half, guard
Ben Kopetzki found a groove in the second half, knocking down six of his 10 attempts from the field, including a 3-of-5 mark from deep, for 18 points in the final 20 minutes. The junior finished the contest with 26 points and nine rebounds, leading all players in the game in both categories.
Redshirt freshman
Ryan Johnson and sophomore
Marcus Burks scored nine points each for CSP, also adding two and four rebounds, respectively. Johnson paced all players in the game with five assists for Concordia. Junior
Jaden Wysocki added six points and four rebounds, while sophomore
Owen Carlson finished with six points and three rebounds.
The Golden Bears struggled to find a rhythm early in the game, shooting just 32.4% from the field in the opening half. The Jimmies led by as many as 13 points in the opening frame, but the Bears outscored them 27-16 in the final nine minutes of the half and used a buzzer-beating triple from Kopetzki to cut the deficit to just two points at 37-35 going into halftime.
Concordia grabbed its first lead of the night at 40-39 with 18:08 to play on another three pointer from Kopetzki, but the Jimmies quickly regained control and pushed their lead to five at 55-50 with 9:31 on the clock. The Bears tied the game up at 58 each just over two minutes later and went on to retake the lead at 60-59 with under four minutes remaining in regulation. Three more ties and two additional lead changes followed in the final three minutes of the contest, but it was yet another clutch triple by Kopetzki with just 25 seconds remaining that put the Bears on top for what proved to be the final time with a score of 70-69. Following a Jamestown turnover, Kopetzki added a late free throw to give CSP its largest lead of the night at 71-69. The Jimmies took a timeout to draw up one final play with just five seconds on the clock, but the CSP defense came up with one final stop following the inbounds pass, forcing another Jamestown turnover to seal the come-from-behind victory.
In total, CSP spent just 1:04 of game time with the lead while the Jimmies were in front for 32:55. The Golden Bears final shooting line was 26-of-66 (39.4%) from the field and 9-of-28 (32.1%) from beyond the arc, while Jamestown finished 24-of-57 (42.1%) overall and 10-of-27 (37.0%) from deep. Concordia managed a 41-38 edge in rebounds and took better care of the ball than UJ, winning the turnover margin 13-9 and turning it into a 12-6 scoring edge in points off takeaways.
Anthony Walters led the way for Jamestown with 19 points and two rebounds, while Cole Glasgow added 12 points and four rebounds.
The Golden Bears will wrap up their weekend road trip on Saturday afternoon when they take on Northern State (7-10, 7-4 NSIC) at 4 p.m. in Aberdeen, S.D.
