UND defense to face huge test in Summit League tournament quarterfinal against Denver
· Yahoo Sports
Mar. 5—GRAND FORKS — Denver lost just two games in February. The Pioneers beat North Dakota State, UND, St. Thomas, South Dakota State and South Dakota in that stretch.
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The Fighting Hawks will have their hands full in the Summit League tournament quarterfinals Friday evening at the Denny Sanford Premier Center.
The Hawks lost three of their last four regular-season games and earned the No. 3 seed, setting up a contest against the hot, sixth-seeded Pioneers.
"A couple of those games were close, a couple of them weren't," senior guard Eli King said. "I think we're just so confident in the team, confident (in) what we can do, I think that's just the mentality: 0-0 for every single team in the Summit League. Just go in and try to take things one game at a time."
Denver beat UND 98-79 on Feb. 7 at the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center. Three different players finished with 20 or more points, and the Pioneers shot 58.3% from the field.
To be fair, the Hawks had key players out in the loss. Senior guard Garrett Anderson, who is averaging 10.7 points per game this season, was still out from an injury he suffered against St. Thomas.
Josh Jones was also absent. UND's junior center has played just once since suffering an arm injury against Omaha on Feb. 5. Jones logged six minutes against South Dakota on Feb. 11 sporting a heavily wrapped right arm.
"We just need to do a lot better job of closeouts, taking their threes away, but then also guarding them off the bounce," head coach Paul Sather said. "When we played them last, we didn't have Garett or Josh, and the physicality, the size. ... Their guards are big, and so we just didn't handle that very well the last time we played. We were playing a bit smaller."
Anderson has returned to the lineup since then. It is unclear whether Jones will be available for the tournament. Sather described his odds of playing against the Pioneers as "probably 50/50."
Jones isn't a major offensive threat for the Hawks, but his 6-foot-9, 245-pound frame is pivotal for their defense.
"We don't have another guy like him in the program," Sather said. "We don't have a guy that we can just put out there that has the size, physicality, just experience, the maturity aspect of what he brings. He's got a really good calmness about him. He does a lot of things defensively for us, where he's a little bit like Eli. There's just a lot of things that he fixes."
Jones or not, Denver's offense will pose a major threat. The Pioneers are tied with St. Thomas for the No. 1 scoring offense in the league, averaging 83.3 points per game. That's been partially driven by their 38.3% shooting from 3-point range, which also ranks atop the conference.
Summit League Player of the Year Carson Johnson has led the way. The sophomore guard is averaging a league-high 20.2 points per game this season.
"If you've got some advice, let me know," Sather said when asked how UND will go about slowing them down. "Denver is a very good offensive team. Their offensive statistics are awesome. They're not a high turnover team, either, so we've got to try to do the best we can, to take advantage of any turnovers they might have, but then just do a really good job of guarding the basketball and making life harder than what we did (the) second time we played them."
The Hawks beat the Pioneers 93-86 on Jan. 24. UND went shot-for-shot with the elite offense and ultimately won thanks in large part to redshirt freshman guard Greyson Uelmen's late-game heroics.