South Dakota Stat opened Wednesday’s game against IUPUI on a 15-0 run and  the Jackrabbits defense came through in a 68-53 win in head coach Scott Nagy’s 600th career game as a head coach.

 

The Jacks improve to 12-7 overall and to 3-2 in The Summit League, while the Jags fall to 6-12 overall and to an even 2-2 in league play.

 

“Any Division I win is a good win, and there’s still a lot of things left for us to work on; our rebounding and offensively we weren’t very sharp tonight, a lot of turnovers, but our defense was good enough to win it for us because our offense wasn’t great” said Nagy, who coached all 600 games in his career at SDSU. “Obviously the start helped a lot, other than the start, it was a fairly even ball game.”

 

An 0 for 12 start from the field, along with two missed free throws, helped fuel the Jacks opening run, as the Jaguars didn’t crack the scorebook until almost 10 minutes into the game, when Elijah Ray broke the drought on a layup with 10 minutes, 38 seconds left in the opening half.

 

SDSU would push its lead to 18 points at 22-6 on a George Marshall layup with less than eight minutes left in the frame, but the Jags outscored the Jacks 14-8 over the rest of the half to cut the lead to 30-20 at the break.

 

The Jags opened the scoring in the second half with a 3-point play to cut the lead to seven points, and cut it to as few as three at 40-37 with 13:37 on the clock.

 

The Jacks responded with short 7-2 run to push the lead back to eight points at 47-39, then went up by double digits for good at 55-45 on a Reed Tellinghuisen layup with 7:29 remaining and never looked back.

 

Tellinghuisen led a trio of Jackrabbits in double figures with 18 points on 6 of 9 shooting overall and a 5 for 5 mark from 3-point range. Marshall and Cody Larson both finished with 15 points, thank largely to free throws, as Marshall went 8 for 12 from the stripe and Larson 9 for 12. Larson also added a game-high nine rebounds.

 

Ray led the Jaguars with 12 points off the bench, with Khufu Najee adding 11 points in a starting role.

 

SDSU returns to action on Saturday, when Nagy coaches in his bare fee to raise money and awareness for Samaritan’s Feet in the South Dakota Corn Showdown Series game against South Dakota. The Jacks and Coyotes tip at 4:30 p.m.