It got a little shaking in the second half, but the Lights were able to defeat the Bulldogs 82-62.
The first six seconds of the game led a lot to believe that it was going to be MSU-Northern’s night as Myles Dalton pulled up and drained a three followed by an Immanuel Anderson steal and dunk and Jesse Keltner layup. That put MSUN up 7-0 early and forced Western to take an early timeout and make some quick subs. Tanner Haverfield would hit a three to put Western on the board and that started the back and forth scoring of the half. A Ky Kouba three with 13:50 left to go would make it 14-11 and that’s as close the Bulldogs would get to the lights the rest of the half. MSUN would take their largest lead of the half when CJ Nelson made his and-one free throw to put MSUN up 26-18. MSUN would end the half up 35-28 and also getting 7 steals including 4 by Dae’Kwon Watson.
The second half would start out just as well as the first did for MSUN, going up by 19 within the first three minutes. After Watson hit a jumper with 12:53 left to go in the game and made it 57-38, things got interesting. Jamal Stephenson and Jackson Burckley would make back-to-back layups to bring the lead down to 15, then Ky Kouba would hit one of his 3 three-pointers in the half. Tanner McCliment-Call would then hit his lone three to put the lead back to 15, but then Kouba and Burckley would hit threes of their own on back-to-back possessions. Brenton Woods would then take, and hit, a three of his own, then play great defense on McCliment-Call, stealing the ball away and going coast-to-coast for the easy layup. That brought the deficit to four before Watson would make a layup to end the 11-0 run by Montana Western. However, the very next possession by the Bulldogs would cut the lead down to three as Burckley would once again hit from behind the line. The lead for MSUN would fluctuate between three and five until a turnover by Jamal Stephenson would lead to a Jesse Keltner dunk putting MSUN up by seven. After a Brenton Woods layup brought the lead down to five again with 6:22 left to play, Western would not score for the rest of the game. MSUN would go on to score the final 15 points of the game on their way to an 82-62 win and a spot in the semi-finals tonight.
MSUN would get 13 steals, 5 by both Watson and Nelson. Keltner would add 6 blocks to his already impressive 18 point, 11 rebound performance. Nelson (21), Keltner (18), Watson (14) and Martinez (11) all ended the night in double-figures. The team as a whole shot 54.4%.
MSUN will now turn their attention to The University of Providence, a team that took the regular season series (2-1), and a couple of players in Davien Harris-Williams and Marcus Stephens that are fighting for Frontier Conference Player of the Year. If they win tonight, they will play the winner of the Montana Tech and Rocky Mountain College game for a chance to get an automatic bid into the NAIA National Tournament.
