A tough home loss by the men and a road win by the women capped a night of Summit League basketball for the University of South Dakota.
On a night when top players Taylor Braun and Marshall Bjorklund struggled to score, it was fellow senior TrayVonn Wright who totaled a game-high 20 points and pulled down eight rebounds to lead North Dakota State to a 66-63 win against South Dakota Thursday night inside the DakotaDome.
South Dakota (8-12, 3-3 Summit) rebounded from a 44-33 halftime deficit to take a 61-56 lead with four minutes to go. Tyler Flack scored nine points and had 10 rebounds in the second half alone.
Flack tied the game at 55 with a 3-pointer with 8:35 left. It was part of a 15-4 USD run that spanned nine minutes. Flack made all four shots he took in the second stanza.
USD senior center Trevor Gruis scored a team-high 16 points, but missed two free throws with nine seconds left and his team trailing 64-63. Gruis was 8 of 8 from the stripe at that point, but all of those came in the first half.
– Junior Raeshel Contreras scored a career-high 28 points and Tia Hemiller was one rebound shy of a double-double as the South Dakota women’s basketball team topped North Dakota State 83-70 to move back above .500 this season on Thursday night at the Bison Sports Arena.
Contreras was 9-for-16 shooting and 6-for-9 from beyond the 3-point arc. Hemiller added 15 points, nine rebounds and six assists. Nicole Seekamp, who missed the last three games because of an ankle injury, scored 13 points off the bench and Polly Harrington added 11 points.
Overall, the Coyotes (11-10, 2-4) shot 48 percent from the floor and 52 percent (10-of-19) from 3-point range.
