Dominant Second half sends no. 2 Seed St. Thomas for title slope

The basics
Score: No. 2 St. Thomas 85, No. 6 North Dakota 69
Registrations: St. Thomas (24-9, 12-4 SL), North Dakota (12-20, 5-11 SL)
Location: Denny Sanford Premier Center – Sioux Falls, SD

Sioux Falls, SD – No. 2 St. Thomas won his first trip to the Summit League Championship title games thanks to a dominant second half when Tommies defeated No. 6 Seed North Dakota 85-64 in the semi-finals on Saturday at the Denny Sanford Premier Center.

Kendall Blue led all scorers by 21 points, and Tommies forced Fighting Hawks to 24 revenue, scoring 40 points from these miscues to reach the first conference title in the program’s division in -Særa.

Drake Dobbs and Carter Bjerke each added 15 points and Miles Barnstable tiled in 14 when four Tommies reached double in a game, the Outscored Fighting Hawks 52-36 after the break.

Bjerke did St. Thomas’ first field goal attempt from Deep, but Tommies would miss their next 10 when Und opened a 12-5 advantage.

Fighting Hawks started 5-AF-8, but then missed six straight and failed to take more advantage of UST’s cold draft.

Bjerke made a putback from his own miss to click on the almost six minute field target draft. After two more Misses, Drake Dobb’s back-to-back buckets and Kendall Blue made a three-point game to cut the deficit to 15-14.

With Tommies, who focused a lot of their defensive attention on Treysen Eaglestaff, which had a Summit League tournament record 51 in Hawks’ quarterfinals of South Dakota State, two unlikely sources buried back-to-back triples such as Mamburou Mara and Amar Kuljuhovic to Spark A 10-0 Double-joint in the game.

St. Thomas took his turn to run a race and drafted an 11-2 stretch that drew the higher seeded Tommies within two at 27-25.

Bjerke finished half of the fact that he started it, and drilled a triple for Tommies, squinging things at 33-33 with the brand from their starting center. Blue had 10 first half points to lead all scores, while the defense held Eaglestaff Scoreless for the third equal half after he did not score in the second regular seasonal match against Tommies on February 27.

It all was Tommies in the second half when they reached their first half points in total at the 9: 41 mark on a layup from Nolan Minessale. It limited a 13-for-20 start from the floor and had St. Thomas up 66-49.

After this spurt, and showed a small life that got three straight field goals to cut its deficit to 10, but Barnstable hit Tommies’ ninth three-pointer, and Fighting Hawks never came back within single digits.

Eaglestaff found the scoring column in the second half, but he could only muster six points after his historic performance in the quarterfinals. Kuljuhovic ended with 13, while Eli King and Mier Panoam shared Holdhøj honor with 15.

Tommies plays Mavericks in Sunday’s title game at. 20 CT at CBS SPORTS NETWORK. With St. Thomas, who is still not eligible for NCAA post-season games, as it continues a five-year transition to Division I-Level, Omaha, as Summit League seasonmaster, will serve the league’s automatic bid and represent the conference of the 2025 NCAA tournament for the first time.

Turning point
After 36-33 early in the second half, Bjerke hit his third triple of the game to ignite a decisive 14-5 race that put Tommies in the lead for good. Blue connected to a three-pointer and Minessale threw a thump home under this spurt to ignite Tommie tro-timber, which made the trip from St. Paul.

Inside the box score

• Tommies had matched their output from the first half of the opening 10:19 of the second half as they broke a draw in half and charged rather than lead 17 at the time.
• Both teams shot well from the floor, but it was Tommies’ dozen made from three-point range that turned out to be the difference. St. Thomas finished 12-for-29, while und only made 6-of-21.
• St. Thomas forced Fighting Hawks to 22 revenue and scored 35 points from these miscues.

News and notes

• St. Thomas plays in the tournament title match on just their third trip to Sioux Falls – Tommies went on to the semi -finals in their first two trips in 2023 and 2024.
• North Dakota performed its only previous appearance in the Summit League Tournament title game as Fighting Hawks was also No. 6 -Seed in 2020. It was also Fighting Hawk’s last performance in the semi -finals.

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