During a frigid couple of days in Brookings, the Jackrabbit men’s basketball team kept the pot only lukewarm during their first Summit League road trip of the season.
South Dakota State split their two road games with a 81-80 win over St. Thomas and a 99-80 loss to Denver.
Junior guard, Zeke Mayo, hit a jumper just outside the right edge of the lane with six seconds left in the second half to give the Jacks the one-point lead that would eventually be a final score following a missed last second shot from the Tommies’ Raheem Anthony.
The matchup at Schoenecker Arena in the capital city of Minnesota pitted the last two undefeated Summit League teams against each other early in the conference season.
SDSU exploded with a 12-0 run to end the first half up 39-30 over St. Thomas, but four minutes into the second half, the Tommies cut the lead to 42-41. Later in the half, Kendall Blue put up two free throws giving STU the 58-57 lead with just over nine minutes left to play in regulation.
The Tommies extended the lead with an 11-0 scoring streak leading by as many as eight points. The Tommies led 70-74 with just 1:33 left on the clock.
Charlie Easley was big down the stretch knocking down a 3-pointer to cut the St. Thomas lead to 79-77. Easley finished the game with 7 points on 3-of-6 shooting.
Mayo, the hero of the game for the Jacks, finished with a game-leading 25 points leading SDSU to a 9-8 overall record staying undefeated in the Summit at 2-0.
The Yellow and Blue then traveled from Minnesota to mile high to take on the Pioneers of Denver on Saturday.
The nation’s leading scorer, Tommy Bruner and Pedro Lopez Sanvicente combined for 49 points in the 99-80 win.
Even though Denver led for the majority of the first half, Easley hit two big 3-pointers to give the Jacks a one point advantage around the four minute mark of the first half. William Kyle III also hit a field goal with just over two minutes left to put them up 43-39.
The Jacks battled to a six-point scoring streak to get the only lead of the second half at 56-55 with 15:24 left. From there, the Pioneers, led by Bruner’s 26 points on 11-of-17 shooting, stretched the lead to double digits ending in the final score.
Denver improved to 11-7 overall, dropping SDSU to 9-9 in regular season play. Both the Jacks and Pios are 2-1 in the Summit.
South Dakota State now switches their focus to Omaha in Brookings Thursday at 7 p.m. in Frost Arena. The Mavericks are one game above .500 at 10-9 having won three out of four games in the short conference season.
UNO is straight off a 79-61 win over North Dakota and a high scoring affair against North Dakota State winning 96-92.
Frankie Fidler, the Mavs leading scorer, was named the TicketSmarter Summit League Peak Performer of the Week after leading Omaha to two wins and first place in the Summit.
The junior, who averaged 18 points per game, scored a total of 63 points last week shooting 16-for-32 racking up 19 rebounds.
The Jacks will then travel down I-29 for the Interstate Series against USD on Saturday at 1 p.m. in the Sanford Coyote Sports Center.
The Coyotes are currently in the middle of a four-game losing streak, heading into their game against St. Thomas, dropping games to Eastern Washington and Montana in the Big Sky-Summit challenge and Omaha and Oral Roberts in league play. They have also lost seven of their last eight games all together stretching back to Dec. 16.
Kaleb Stewart, a transfer from Louisiana Tech, paces the team with 14 points per game shooting just under .500 from the floor and .422 from 3-point range.