North Dakota Is Nebraska’s Scrooge As Fighting Hawks Steal Early Christmas Win

Every time Nebraska tried to make a significant play to tie or take the lead, North Dakota made the bigger play Saturday evening at the Pinnacle Bank Arena.

“You got to say do you want it,” Nebraska Men’s Basketball Coach Fred Hoiberg said. “You can’t only want it during the good times. You have to want it during the tough times.”

Despite out scoring North Dakota 21-14 over the final 8:17, the Nebraska Men’s Basketball Team (5-7) fell to the Fighting Hawks 75 -74 behind Cam Mack’s team-high 19 points. 

“You have to battle through the adversity. That’s what the good teams do and right now we are too inconsistent with that,” Hoiberg said.

It’s the first win for North Dakota (6-7) against the Huskers since 1993.

“I’m just really happy for our guys. It’s a cool thing for them because it hasn’t been an easy season,” North Dakota Head Coach Paul Sather said. “We’ve traveled a ton, been a lot of places, played some really good teams and it would be easy for these guys to get down on themselves. They showed a lot of belief tonight and that was fun to see.”

De’Sean Allen-Eikens spilt a pair of free throws with 7.3 seconds left to take the one point lead before NU’s Dachon Burke missed the potential game winning baseline right jump shot.

Burke finished with 10 as eight Husker’s got in the scorebook.

Nebraska fell behind by as many as eight points in the second half before Matej Kavas drilled a three and ignited a 8-0 run to tie the game at 61-61 with 5:48 left.

That score trimmed the gap to the smallest margin since the Huskers led 4-0 to open the game.

Kavas then gave the Huskers a 72-71 lead on his fourth three of the game with 1:48 left but UND responded when Allen-Eikens converted a three-point-play.

Burke then missed the front end of a one-and-one before the Huskers got the ball back and Mack tied the game at 74 with a three before the ensuing free throw and missed shot.

All evening, the Huskers missed several point-blank shots at crucial moments that could’ve swung momentum to the Huskers and it started in the first half.

“I thought we would come out and play with great energy. But for whatever reason we didn’t. And sometimes in life you get exactly what you deserve and that’s what happened with this game,” Hoiberg said.

“We let them come out and get confident early because of our lack of defensive energy and intensity. To have this type of effort is very disappointing. It is very discouraging.”

The Huskers only converted two three-pointers in the first half.  Mack hit the first with just over five minutes to go in the first frame.  They shot 22 percent before finishing at 43 percent behind the arc.

“We wanted to attack. We thought we could get into the paint. You look at our percentages I think almost 48% from the floor 43% from the three,” Hoiberg said. “Wasn’t great from the line. Kind of the story for our group. This was not lost on the offensive end.”

Nebraska held UND off the foul line until 13:06 left in the game. The Fighting Hawks finished 6-8 from the line while the Huskers hit 9 of 16.

Overall, Nebraska out rebounded North Dakota and had the higher three-point shooting percentage.

The Huskers return home next Sunday when they host Texas A & M Corpus Cristi.