THE MATCHUP
Montana State’s men’s basketball team cruised to a second straight league victory on Thursday night against Northern Colorado in Greeley. The defending Big Sky Conference champions looked to pick up the road sweep against a Northern Arizona squad coming off a 75-74 overtime win over Montana in Flagstaff on Thursday. MSU won 89-84 in Flag last year and also hung on for a 72-70 win over NAU in Bozeman during the regular season.
THE RESULT
Northern Arizona looked flat out of the gates and trailed 17-2 early on. Montana State led by as many as 21 in the first half and closed the first stanza with a 40-24 lead. NAU cut the lead to eight points several times in the second half but didn’t have enough juice as Montana State earned a 69-54 victory to move to 3-1 in Big Sky Conference play, 10-7 overall. NAU is now 1-3 in league, 5-12 overall.
Montana State head coach Danny Sprinkle earned his 66th victory as the head coach of his alma mater, moving him into 9th on MSU’s all-time list.
THE STANDOUTS
Montana State senior point guard Darius Brown II poured in 22 points and dished out four assists, while finishing 8-of-9 from the floor. The former Cal-State-Northridge transfer surpassed 1,000 points in his career with the scoring effort.
Northern Arizona did a good job of denying touches to Jubrile Belo, MSU’s standout senior center and the reigning Big Sky MVP, along with fellow Bobcat big man Great Osobor. Belo went 2-of-3 and finished with nine points. Osobor finished 1-of-2 and scored four.
Bobcat swingman Raequan Battle snapped out of a recent shooting slump and hit 6-of-10 from the floor on the way to 14 points. Tyler Patterson hit five of his seven attempts from beyond the 3-point arc and finished with 15 points as MSU went 8-of-18 from beyond the arc.
Brown and Robert Ford also shared duties guarding explosive NAU guard Jalen Cone, one of the Big Sky’s leading scorers who went off for 26 points on Thursday against the Griz. Cone finished 2-of-10 from the floor and scored 12 points.
Xavier Fuller scored 17 of his team-high 23 points in the second half to help NAU stay competitive.
BOX SCORE
QUOTABLE
“Darius Brown has a tremendous feel for basketball — especially on offense. He makes the right passes and makes the game easy for everybody. Passing 1,000 career points is a special achievement for him because of how he plays since he’s a pass-first player. I’m super proud of him. We needed all of his 22 points, four assists and three steals tonight.”
Montana State head coach Danny Sprinkle
“I thought Darius did a good job on Jalen Cone in the first half and Robert Ford III did a great job on him in the second half. We did a pretty good job making Cone guard on the defensive end. We tried to wear him out — he played a lot of minutes [against Montana] on Thursday, so we tried to make him run around. ”
Montana State head coach Danny Sprinkle
“We got down 17-2 and 21 points was their biggest lead of the first half. I was surprised, I thought we had good shots but we didn’t make them and we were stale on offense early.”
NAU head coach Shane Burcar
“The big part of the game was that we got it within eight points, and we had three or four possessions where we had good shots and could’ve gotten within five or six points, but we couldn’t get over the next hump to really put some game pressure on Montana State. I give them credit, Jubrille Belo and Great Osobor shot five total field goals and Darius Brown II came big for them, RaeQuan Battle is a good player. They have depth, and that’s why they’re picked number one in the preseason and will be there at the end of the Big Sky season this year.”
NAU head coach Shane Burcar
Who’s next
Montana State hosts Idaho State at 7 p.m. on Thursday and Weber State on Saturday. NAU plays at Portland State on Thursday and at Sac State on Saturday.
