Jake Bittle scored a career-high 25 points and Deondre Parks added 21 points and six rebounds as South Dakota State defeated Minnesota 84-70 on Tuesday night at Williams Arena.
The Jacks played without starting point going George Marshall who sat out the contest with an injury.
Off to their best start at the Division I level, the Jackrabbits improve to 8-1, while the Golden Gophers fall to 5-4 after back-to-back losses to Summit League foes.
“I think one of the reasons why we played well is we had three very good practices and it led into good play. We ran a play for Jake right off the bat, he didn’t make the shot, but at least it got him going, and then he really got going, he obviously played very well. When he’s good and he’s energetic, we’re hard to beat, we’re really hard to beat,” head coach Scott Nagy said. “I thought our bench did a great job; TK (Tevin King) got good minutes, made some good plays and Keaton did a tremendous job. It was just a good team win.”
The Jackrabbits came out hot, and used 12-0 run to take an early 17-5 lead, capped by a Bittle 3-pointer from the left baseline, his second of the game, which drew a timeout from the Golden Gopher bench with 13 minutes 17 seconds left in the first half and the Jacks leading 19-5.
The Jacks added a 10-0 run later in the half that gave them a 29-12 lead, capped by Reed Tellinghuisen 3-pointer with 9:21 left in the half, drawing another timeout from the Minnesota bench.
SDSU’s lead reached as many as 23 points in the half, the first time on a Parks 3-pointer and the second on Moffitt runner in the lane that gave the Jacks their 45-22 halftime lead.
