North Dakota practices can often end with a competitive flourish. Second-year coach Mallory Bernhard said that free throw battles will break out between Kacie Borowicz and Carlee Sieben, with Maggie Manson occasionally in the mix.
For those that know her, it should come as no surprise Borowicz is involved.
“Kacie is a competitor and I think anyone that got to watch her play in high school could see that immediately,” Bernhard said when asked what stood out when she was recruiting the junior guard. “She’s fiercely competitive. The kid just hates losing and we see that every single day, even in practice.”
There hasn’t been much losing in recent weeks for UND, in large part because of Borowicz. The high-scoring guard is in the midst of a breakout season that has helped propel the Fighting Hawks (10-8, 4-3) up the Summit League standings and quintuple their amount of wins from a year ago. The reigning league Player of the Week has scorched the nets in league play to the tune of 20.3 points per game, and is the nation’s third-leading free throw shooter (70-73 FT, 95.8 FT%).
The competitive fire that has fueled that breakout started burning early.
Borowicz has been around basketball her whole life. The Roseau, Minn. native said it started with her parents, as her mom played basketball at Minnesota State University Moorhead, and that passed down to Borowicz and her two sisters (one older, one younger). Growing up – with Kacie in the middle – they pushed each other.
“That would be exactly the word to describe it, competitive,” she said. “We were all extremely competitive.”
That long-simmering dynamic eventually churned out a mountain of wins at Roseau High School. The school that sits around 20 minutes south of the Canadian border was a Minnesota high school basketball power with the Borowicz sisters on the court. Kacie helped the Rams win a state title in 2017 alongside her older sister Kiley (then a senior) and younger sister Katie (then an eighth grader). She called that year the best of her basketball life, and followed it up with second and third place finishes, respectively, in the two seasons that followed.
As she headed to UND in the summer of 2019, she brought a 3,000-point pedigree, Miss Minnesota Basketball title and a game that had been honed playing alongside her sisters for years. But that didn’t mean they were similar. She said her older sister Kiley – who played at MSU Moorhead – brought a strong, driving game to the table (“she’s just a brute”), while her younger sister Katie – who plays at Minnesota – grabbed parts of Kiley’s strength and Kacie’s self-described mid-range, methodical game.
That upbringing has helped turn Borowicz into one of the Summit’s most dynamic offensive threats.
No player has averaged more points per game than Borowicz (20.3 ppg) in league play, and it’s helped translate to a four-game winning streak that moved the Fighting Hawks from 0-3 in league play after a loss to South Dakota State on Jan. 1, to a tie for third in the standings. The junior guard underscored the winning streak with a 33-point outing in a big road win over Western Illinois on Jan. 13, a team that at the time had won six of its previous seven games.
The scoring, however, is not the only thing that’s impressed her coach. Borowicz is also averaging a career-high 4.6 assists per game, currently the second-best mark in the league.
“She’s doing a lot of things to help her teammates as well,” Bernhard said. “There’s been a lot of girls that we talk to on a consistent basis on how they’re trying to grow, like with decision making, and she’s been incredibly receptive to how she can learn and improve and get better. She’s not settling and saying, ‘this is enough for me.’ She wants to get better.”
From injury to history
That type of starry-eyed season may have seemed far in the distance a year ago.
Bernhard made her debut as head coach in the disjointed, pandemic-affected 2020-21 season, being elevated to the big chair after seven seasons as an assistant coach at her alma mater. The Fighting Hawks went 2-19 and had to navigate what Bernhard called a unique year largely without Borowicz, who was limited to just seven games after dealing with a stress fracture to her tibia.
“I’d never really been injured before, I don’t even remember if I missed a game in high school, I don’t think I did,” Borowicz said. “That was just extremely hard on me, and once I healed up toward the end of the season I was just super excited to get back.”
Her start to this season layered even more excitement on top of her return to health. UND was in need of a win after an 0-2 start when Borowicz made her 2021-22 debut in a Nov. 20 home game against Montana State. She went on to score 33 points and went 20-20 from the line that night, helping the Fighting Hawks get their first win of the season while setting the program record for free throws made in a single game.
The history-making flavor to that avalanche of free throws was lost on both player and coach in the moment.
Bernhard said she knew Borowicz was hitting a lot of free throws but locked in as she was during a close game, didn’t notice it had crept into the 20’s until she had the final stat sheet in hand. For Borowicz herself, it wasn’t until after the game in the locker room that Bernhard announced there was a new single-game free throw record holder that she realized the sheer amount of times she’d been to the line.
“I knew I had shot a lot of free throws, but they were pretty spread out until the last minute,” Borowicz said. “When Coach [Bernhard] said I just went 20-for-20 I said, ‘I just shot 20 free throws? There’s no way I shot 20 free throws.’”
Borowicz also had a 12-12 night from the line in the win over WIU, but her mid-range heavy offensive attack hasn’t been solely boosted by trips to the charity stripe. Overall, UND has ridden a dependable offense to that rejuvenating four-game winning streak. The Fighting Hawks have averaged 64.9 points per game in league play while shooting 44 percent from the field, the fourth-best clip over that span. The real improvement, however, may well have come on the glass, an area that Bernhard said was something she challenged her team to clean up earlier in the year.
Junior forward Olivia Lane is enjoying a career year herself (12.4 ppg, 7.8 rpg), while senior center Melissa Leet is coming off a dominating performance (22 points, 10-11 FG, 8 rebounds) in the team’s most recent win over St. Thomas. Paired with Borowicz’s offensive upswing and yet another career campaign from senior guard Claire Orth (11.1 ppg, 4.0 rpg), UND must be feeling optimistic about its chances to keep the positive momentum going throughout the rest of the season. They’ll get a stiff test with Oral Roberts on Thursday night, a team that is riding its own four-game winning streak and has a breakout freshman in Tirzah Moore.
Bernhard said she sees turnovers and fouling as places her team can improve the rest of the way, two areas she’ll surely be looking at against the Golden Eagles. Nonetheless, the season has resoundingly trended in the right direction with Borowicz in the lead.
“I think we still have a long way to go in terms of who we are,” she said. “But I think we’re getting there with our cohesiveness and I can see the continuity between our team. We’re still working on a lot of things, but I definitely see some growth.”
