South Dakota State erased a 19-point deficit only to falter down the stretch and have its basketball season end Wednesday.
The Jacks climbed its way out of a big halftime hole to take a second half lead at Old Dominion, but the host Monarchs got it right back and held on for the 72-65 win in the first round of the College Basketball Invitational.
The loss ends the Jackrabbits season with a 19-13 overall record, while the Monarchs even their record at 17-17, and advance to play either Radford or Oregon State in the CBI quarterfinals on Monday.
“The game for us obviously was lost for us in the first half. They were really good and we were really bad on top of it, and it made for a 15 point lead at halftime that almost got to 20 at one points,” head coach Scott Nagy said. “In the second have we showed up and at least got our respect back at least in terms of showing up and could’ve won the game had we rebounded the ball like we normally do, but they did a great job. They weren’t shooting it well, but they went and chased it, and got nine offensive rebounds in the second half.”
Those nine offensive boards in the second half resulted in nine Monarch second chance, and even though the Jacks scored 20 second chance points on 15 offensive rebounds, the Monarchs finished the game with 22 points off of 14 Jackrabbit turnovers, while SDSU did not capitalize on any of the seven ODU turnovers.
Trailing by three early in the game, Jordan Dykstra tied the game at 10 with one of his four 3-pointers, but the Monarchs responded with a 15-0 run that turned into a 20-3 run that ended with the monarchs up 30-13 with 8 minutes, 46 seconds left in the first half.
That lead would grow to as many as 19 points with just over four minutes left in the half, before the Jacks cut it to 15 at 48-33 at halftime.
The Jacks opened second half on a 14-2 run that cut the ODU lead to 50-47 with just under 14 minutes left in the game, and then tied the game at 58-all on a pair of Brayden Carlson free throws with 9:01 left.
After falling behind again, Zach Horstman knotted the game at 60-all a couple of minutes later before Dykstra gave SDSU its first lead at 63-62 with a 3-poitner from the top of the key with just under seven minutes to play.
The lead held for almost three minutes before the Monarchs got it back for good on a Dmitri Batten triple with 4:27 left.
Dykstra led a trio of Jackrabbits in double figures with 16 points, with Horstman adding a career-high 15. Cody Larson posted his sixth double-double of the season with 14 points and 12 rebounds, which ties a career-high.
