Jackrabbit men fall short at Oakland

Thursday, February 18

Rochester, Mich.

7 p.m. ET

South Dakota State University

Oakland

2/18/2010 10:00:00 PM | Men's Basketball

By: SDSU Sports Info

ROCHESTER, Mich. - Just like they always do, the South Dakota State men's basketball team played Oakland tough on Thursday night, but they did so in a losing cause, as the Golden Grizzlies secured at least a share of The Summit League regular season title with an 88-83 win over the Jackrabbits.

"We've gone from being a team that's not very good to a team that's pretty good and if want to become a championship team, we've got to start taking care of the details," SDSU head coach Scott Nagy said in the postgame interview. "If you look at the game tonight, we missed just a few details."

The loss drops the Jackrabbits to 13-13 overall and 9-6 in The Summit League, Oakland improves to 21-8 overall and 15-1 in league play with the win.

Six Jackrabbits scored in double figures in the win, led by Kai Williams and Garrett Callahan, who scored all of his points in the first half. Michael Palarca and Nate Wolters both scored 12 points, while Anthony Cordova and Clint Sargent both scored 11 points in the loss.

Johnathon Jones led five Golden Grizzlies in double figures with 25 points, Will Hudson added 22, Keith Benson scored 12 points and grabbed a game-high 13 rebounds, while Derick Nelson and Blake Cushingberry both finished with 10 points.

The Jacks started the game hot, jumping out to a 12-3 lead with less than three minutes off the clock. Oakland returned the favor though, and fought back to tie the game at 21-all with just under 12 minutes left in the first half, but led just 42-40 at halftime.

Oakland extended its lead to as many as 11 points midway through the second half, only to see that Jacks erase the lead and tie the game at 72 on a Wolters basket with 5:20 to play.

OU answered with a 9-2 run, and even though the Jacks got to within two points at 85-83 (the final score of the first meeting of the season in Frost Arena), they did it with just 24 seconds left in the game and the Golden Grizzlies went 3-for-4 from the foul line down the stretch to seal the win and a share of the regular season conference title.

The Jackrabbits return to action on Saturday, when they take on IPFW in Memorial Coliseum at 2 p.m. The Mastodons completed a season sweep of North Dakota State on Thursday with 71-67 win over the Bison.