After posting each of its League wins by double digits, North Dakota finally had to sweat one out.
The Fighting Hawks were pushed to the limit against Omaha last Saturday, overturning an early 11-point deficit -- and a hot Mavericks’ start in overtime -- to grab their third straight win. Those tense moments were new territory for UND. When the Fighting Hawks have won this year, they have done it in style with each Summit win until Saturday coming by 13 points or more.
Against Omaha, it was crucial baskets by Brady Danielson and Treysen Eaglestaff late in overtime that helped eke out the victory in a back-and-forth game.
“There’s a lot of things out there where you take a couple steps forward and a step back,” Paul Sather
said after the game. “We were able to finish taking a couple steps forward.”
The fourth-year coach may as well have been summing up his team’s last few weeks. The Fighting Hawks suddenly find themselves among the hottest teams in the conference as the most important time of the year draws near. UND is riding its first three-game league winning streak since 2018-19, which has breathed life into a season that appeared adrift after an 0-6 start to Summit play.
The resurgence can be traced back to the Fighting Hawks’ win at home over Kansas City on Jan. 18, a game in which they launched a season-high 42 three’s, making a program-record 18 of them. That outside shooting bonanza lifted them to their first League win of the year, and was on brand for a team that used the three to great effect.
Sather’s team has not been shy about letting it fly since then.
Three-point shots have made up nearly half (47.5 percent) of the Fighting Hawks field goal attempts since League play began, a mark that is tops in a perennially perimeter-happy League, and would rank eighth nationally if applied across the entire season. Sometimes those shots have fallen – like in a blowout win over South Dakota – and sometimes they have not, like during the loss at Western Illinois.
But overall, UND’s offense has been trending upward in a big way.
“I feel like we’re finally coming together as a group and being unselfish on offense,” Danielson said after the Omaha win. “I think it kind of starts on defense, you can tell when we make our runs it starts on defense.”
Since that Jan. 18 win over the Roos, the Fighting Hawks have scored 1.08 points per possession, which trails only Oral Roberts, South Dakota and North Dakota State in the League. That’s a marked improvement over what UND had posted in non-conference action and the early part of League play. Now, it's been been done over a long enough period (8 games) that it certainly seems here to stay.
Junior guard Matt Norman has been at the forefront of that offensive uptick He’s scorched the net in League play (14.4 ppg, 45.7 3P%) in a real push for all-league honors. Tsotne Tsartsidze has also been incredibly productive in league play (12.7 ppg, 6.1 rpg) while displaying an outside shooting game the big man did not have in his bag a year ago.
Danielson has been a steady hand, as he was late against the Mavericks, but Sather has gotten contributions from a slew of first-year players throughout the year. Freshmen Eaglestaff and Elijah Brooks have each pitched in in various ways, such as Eaglestaff’s ability to get hot from distance (five three’s against Kansas City) or Brooks’ playing important minutes in recent wins over USD and Denver. Junior College transfer Jalun Trent is also coming off his first Division I double-double with 12 points and 13 rebounds against the Mavericks.
No newcomer, however, has shone like B.J. Omot.
The Mankato, Minn. native has been the team’s most consistent scorer (11.6 ppg) throughout the year, and is the second-highest scoring freshman in the conference behind only St. Thomas’s Andrew Rohde. He played all 45 minutes against Omaha, finding ways to help the team win despite scoring just four points on 1-of-6 shooting from the floor.
Sather highlighted that after the game.
“He fought and it was not easy, [he’s a] a warrior,” Sather said. “No matter what with B.J., the versatility he can bring for us defensively is phenomenal, he can guard one through five in a lot of ways. He gave us 45 minutes of heart and soul.”
Even with the recent winning streak, UND still finds itself staring up at much of the rest of the conference in eighth place (4-10), with a date at ORU looming Thursday and the return game at Kansas City right after. Sather called that an opportunity for his team, and it’s a trip that will be taken by a team that is playing much better than it was just a few weeks ago with seemingly plenty of room left to grow. That’s about all you can ask for with big games ahead in March.
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