Mines earns first DAC win of season

By Padraic Duffy, Journal staff Thursday, December 06, 2007

RAPID CITY — The South Dakota Mines men’s basketball team held Black Hills State to 29.2 percent shooting as the Hardrockers opened their Dakota Athletic Conference schedule with a 70-57 win over the archrival Yellow Jackets at Goodell Gymnasium on Wednesday.

“Our guys did a great job of staying between their men and the basket tonight, and that’s something that we haven’t always done so far this season,” Mines head coach Jason Henry said. “That was a huge deal for us to keep them in front of us, to contain them and contest all their 3s.”

The Yellow Jackets managed to get 23 3-point shots up, but hit only four of those attempts. The only Black Hills State player to reach double figures was Sam Kim with 15 points.

“Our offense just killed us tonight,” Black Hills State head coach Paul Sather said. “We were flat offensively and just weren’t very good at that end tonight. Credit Tech defensively for that, though. They got out and pressured us and we didn’t get many good post looks.”

The Hardrockers jumped out to a 21-12 lead on an A.J. Trennepohl 3-pointer with six minutes left in the first half, but Black Hills charged back to take a 25-24 lead into the half.

“We may have gotten a little tired there,” Henry said. “We didn’t do a very good job of sucking it up there at the end of the first half.”

They didn’t have that problem in the second, though. The Hardrockers came out in the second half and charged to a 41-31 lead at the 11:45 mark. The lead stayed at the 8-10 point range until Black Hills called a timeout with 8:42 to go.

The Yellow Jackets decided to play a little zone defense after the timeout, got a couple of stops of their own and cut the lead to 48-45 with 7:40 remaining. But a couple of big plays by Michael Ross and a score by Donny DeGooyer put Mines back up by nine points and the Yellow Jackets never threatened again. Ross led Mines with 17 points on the night, but it may have been a steal and assist to Robbie Fedor with seven minutes to play that was his biggest play of the night.

“Again, it came down to the defensive end for us,” Henry said. “That was a big play when we needed it and it started with somebody stepping up on the defensive end of the floor.”

DeGooyer and Fedor each chipped in with 13 points for the ‘Rockers, with DeGooyer doing the bulk of his damage early in the first half to get Mines going. Fedor, on the other hand, didn’t score in the first half but came out firing in the second to keep Mines in front.

“We needed Donny to step up for us tonight and he did,” Henry said. “He’s a junior that’s played in this game a few times before so it was important that he came out and played well early. All of our big guys did a good job tonight, from Donny to (Brandon) Smith to (Kaleb) Roehmer and (Brent) Cass. We knew that we were going to have to play well in the post to keep Will John (Johnson) from having a big game and they did a good job of doing that and finding their men and keeping them off the boards.”

The win was the third straight for the Hardrockers (4-6 overall, 1-0 in the DAC) who will host Rocky Mountain on Saturday.