Drue AmanSports Editor

Fitting that the best three-point shooter in SDSU history has the hot hand.

But never quite like this.

SDSU (16-9, 8-6) rode the coat tails of senior Clint Sargent’s 23 points, adding seven threes to his program record and skewered IUPUI (16-11, 10-4) standout Alex Young enough in a 81-70 win, the second win ever over the Jaguars.

That offensive deluge from Sargent was only a part of an 18-0 SDSU scoring run in the middle of the second half that stretched their lead to 24 points and trivialized the game’s final minutes. Sargent’s seven threes came from all over behind the arc and set a career-high for threes in a game, one shy of breaking a single-game record.

“I was feeling good,” said Sargent, who received a signed ball in honor of breaking the career three-point record. “I got a lot of open looks, made a couple early and Nate was finding me in the second half.”

It played out similarly to the previous matchup between the two teams, at least in the first half. The Jacks took a lead that reached 14 points in Indianapolis, only to allow 77 percent shooting in the second half and relinquish their lead entirely. Except on this night, SDSU swelled its lead to 22 points in the second half and never trailed the entire game.

The crest of SDSU’s rally happened over a stretch including a spellbinding inbounds dunk by Dale Moss, a quick shot and miss from Young, and an assist from Nate Wolters to the hot-shooting Sargent, who drained a long three that electrified the crowd of 1,933 and forced a Jaguars timeout.

“We just got into a rhythm,” said Wolters, who threw the inbounds pass on Moss’ latest YouTube hit of a dunk. “The crowd got into it and we just fed off that.”

Not that the only production came from Sargent and Wolters. Sophomore forward Tony Fiegen finished with nine rebounds, helping the Jacks finish plus-4 on the glass while freshman Jordan Dykstra finished with 13 points on an economical 6-of-8 from the floor. SDSU also gave up eight turnovers, again improving its status as one of the best assist-to-turnover ratio teams in the nation.

All of that came from only nine players in uniform after Marcus Heemstra sat out due to sickness and junior guard Aireus Stephenson watched from the crowd with a one-week suspension, according to head coach Scott Nagy.

“It felt a little like the UMKC game, where this is where we needed to make a push but we stayed flat” said Nagy about the feel of the game early in the second half. “We didn’t do that in this game – everything happens around Nate [Wolters] and he was terrific tonight.”

The fact that IUPUI moved the game back to a tie early in the second half makes SDSU’s 22-point lead midway through the second half more impressive. SDSU’s respective runs of 7-0 and 18-0 against IUPUI’s 3-2 zone scheme broke open the floodgates for the teams’ second win ever over the Jaguars.

“We just played good – somebody was saying to me “Your kids are having so much fun’ and I told them that’s because I’m their coach” Nagy said with a visible grin on his face.