The Brookings Register
South Dakota State picked up its first road victory of the season on Thursday night as the Jackrabbits held off Kansas City for a 65-64 win on the road.
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KANSAS CITY — South Dakota State picked up its first road victory of the season on Thursday night as the Jackrabbits held off Kansas City for a 65-64 win on the road.
The Jacks scored just two points in the final 4:11 but they got enough defensive stops to get the victory.
Matthew Mors scored those two points at the free throw line with 2:39 left. Oscar Cluff then blocked a Jamar Brown floater with 1:20 left but Cluff then turned it over on the other end. That led to a Melvyn Ebonkoli lay up on the other end to cut the lead to one with 37 seconds left.
Owen Larson missed a pull up jumper for the Jacks with seven seconds left and Kansas City called timeout. The ball was in Babacar Diallo’s hands and he tried to dribble into the paint. He ran into Kalen Garry and Garry took the ball from him and sealed the win for SDSU.
“I thought our toughness, our rebounding and our defense was terrific late,” said SDSU head coach Eric Henderson. “I thought we did a great job of protecting the paint.
“They had 24 points in the paint with 14 minutes to go and they only ended up with 28. We weren’t great at the end there offensively. We had three turnovers there late, but we were moving the basketball. … They were dead ball turnovers so at least we were able to get our defense set, which was terrific at the end.”
SDSU jumped out to a 9-4 lead. However, the Roos then scored six straight points. Kansas City then led 23-22 with 6:50 left in the first half and went on another 6-0 run to go up 29-22 with 4:21 to play in the half. SDSU then outscored KC 14-8 the rest of the half and trailed 37-36 heading into the break.
The Jacks went on a 6-1 run to open the second half and led 42-38. They would then lead 48-43 with 14:13 left but the Roos would battle back and tie the game at 58-58 with 5:52 left in the game. Joe Sayler then banked in a 3-pointer and Cluff hit two free throws to push the lead back to five with just over four minutes left. Anderson Kopp then hit two free throws and Devontae Hall made a lay up to cut the lead to one and set up the final 2:39.
Cluff came a rebound shy of his second-straight 20-20 game as he finished with 23 points, 19 rebounds and four blocks. Henderson said Cluff’s defense was the most impressive part of his game on Thursday night.
“I thought this was as energized as he’s been. He was really locked in [and that’s scary] because he had 21 and 20 the other night. He was really energized. It was important for him to get stops and he wanted to be a part of it. He was terrific on both ends,” Henderson said.
Mors had 10 points and four rebounds. Sayler had nine points and Isaac Lindsey had eight points.
SDSU shot 40% from the field and was 4-of-18 from three.
Kopp had 19 points to lead the Roos. J Petty had 11 points. Diallo had nine points and Brown had eight points.
Had Kansas City made a basket on the final possession it would have been the second one-possession loss that the Jacks would have suffered on the road in conference play as SDSU fell to St. Thomas 73-72 two weeks ago. Henderson said it was important to come out on top in a close one on Thursday night.
“Obviously, it would have been a heartbreaker if it would have gone the other way. We were on that end up at St. Thomas. We don’t make excuses and we don’t feel sorry for ourselves. We just get back to work and let the results speak for themselves. I was just proud of how our guys did that and if you keep doing that over and over and over again, usually things turn out OK,” Henderson said.
The Jacks will close out the week on Saturday in Brookings as they welcome in-state rival South Dakota to First Bank & Trust Arena. Tip off between SDSU and USD is scheduled for 5 p.m.