Jacks hand ORU first league loss, 75-60

Thursday, February 2

Frost Arena

7:00 PM

South Dakota State University

Oral Roberts

2/3/2012 12:03:00 AM | Men's Basketball

By: SDSU Sports Info

South Dakota State opened Thursday night's game against The Summit League preseason favorite Oral Roberts on a 15-2 run and never trailed again in handing the Golden Eagles their first league loss of the season, 75-60, in front of a boisterous crowd of 4,255 fans at Frost Arena.

"I think the reason we won the game isn't because we were great offensively," head coach Scott Nagy said. "We won the game because we competed physically, which is hard to do against those guys, because they're physically gifted."

Oral Roberts, who falls to 20-5 overall and 12-1 in The Summit League, finished the game 23-of-46 from the field overall, 50 percent, two points higher than the Jackrabbits, who shot 48 percent on 26-of-54 shooting.

ORU also got one more rebound than SDSU, 28-27, but the Jacks finished plus three on the offensive glass, 11-8, which resulted in 17 second chance points for the home team, compared to six by the visitors. Add to that, 15 turnovers by ORU resulting in 21 Jackrabbit points, compared to 13 points for the Golden Eagles on seven SDSU turnovers.

Jordan Dykstra led the Jackrabbits, who improve to 18-6 overall and 10-2 in league play, with seven rebounds, five of them offensive boards, and scored 22 points. Nate Wolters led the way with a game-high 24 points and a game-high nine assists. Tony Fiegen scored eight points and grabbed five rebounds, two of them on offense. Marcus Heemstra played just eight minutes in the contest, but filled in nicely with six points on 2-for-2 shooting from the floor and from the free throw line. He also dished out a pair of assists.

"Marcus is an incredible passer," Nagy said of Heemstra's effort on Thursday. "He's a tremendous passer, he really played well tonight and I'm really happy for him."

Roderick Pearson and Warren Niles led the Golden Eagles with 14 points apiece. Dominique Morrison scored 12 points before fouling out with 4:57 remaining in the game. Steven Roundtree also scored 12 points to go along with his game-high eight rebounds.

The Golden Eagles cut the Jackrabbit early lead to as few as four points in the first half, but the Jacks hung tough, and took a 34-23 lead into the locker room at halftime and never let ORU get closer than that for the rest of the game.

A pair of Wolters buckets to start the second half got the lead back to 15 points. That lead reached the 20-point mark at 63-43 with 8:20 to go on a pair of Wolters free throws, and the Jacks cruised from there to the win.

Undefeated at home this season at 9-0, the Jackrabbits look to make it 12 in a row at home on Saturday, when they host Southern Utah in the 40th Annual Pork Classic at 7:30 p.m. The Thunderbirds (12-11, 7-6 Summit) come to Brookings after dropping an 85-64 game at North Dakota State on Thursday.

NOTES: The Jackrabbits improve to 4-8 all-time against Oral Roberts, 3-3 in home games and 2-3 in games played at Frost Arena ... the 4,255 fans marks the highest attendance at Frost Arena for a game against ORU ... Wolters' 24 points moves him up to 12th on the all-time scoring list at SDSU with 1,387, just eight points shy of cracking the top-10 all-time and 13 points shy of moving up to ninth on the all-time list ... Dykstra scored at least 20 points for the third time this season, all three in the last four games ... ORU's 46 field goal attempts marks a season-low by any SDSU opponent ... SDSU improves to 14-1 when leading at the half and 11-5 when shooting less than 50 percent in a game ... ORU entered the game as the only team in the nation with a 12-0 mark in conference play ... the Jacks snapped a 13-game ORU winning streak, the school's longest such streak under head coach Scott Sutton