Friday, January 21, 2011

You probably missed the wildest game of the night

Utah Valley State beat North Dakota 107-96 in four overtimes.

That, in and of itself, is probably post-worthy, but there was so much more to this game.

North Dakota was up by 11 points with six minutes left in this game, but the Fighting Sioux struggled from the charity stripe down the stretch as UVSU made their run. That run was bolstered by an unlikely source. Ben Aird, who scored a career-high 23 points (more on career-highs in a second), had not attempted a three all season, but he knocked down two triples during that run, the second of which cut UND's lead to six points.

The Wolverines had the lead down to two with 27 seconds left when the Fighting Sioux missed a foul shot -- they were just 32-54 on the night -- to leave the door open for Holton Hunsaker, who buried a jumper with 9.9 seconds left to force overtime.

In the first overtime, North Dakota overcame a six point deficit when a layup by UND's Brandon Brekke tied the score at 64 and forced a second extra frame. Two free throws by UVSU's Jordan Swarbick with 48 seconds left would force a third overtime tied at 71, and that third overtime is when things got really hectic.

With 1:16 left, UVSU was down 81-73. They managed to get the lead down to four, but three UND free throws -- the last of which came with 37 seconds left -- made it 87-80 and the Fighting Sioux looked like they had this one locked up. The next four UVSU possessions went like this -- Swarbick three, Swarbick layup, Isiah Williams three, two Williams free throws. UND had hit 4-6 free throws in that stretch, meaning that with just 3.6 seconds left on the clock, the Fighting Sioux with up 91-90 with the ball out of bounds.

But on that inbounds, UND called a timeout it didn't have, and Swarbick went to the line with two shots to take the lead. He hit 1-2, meaning that UVSU had gone on an 11-4 run in the final 37 seconds of the third overtime -- to cap an extra frame that saw 40 points scored -- to force a fourth OT.

And in that fourth OT, UVSU finally pulled away. They scored the first eight points and UND was never able to make it interesting.

Oh, and about those career highs? Utah Valley State set four -- Isiah Williams (30 points), Jordan Swarbrick (24) and Ben Aird (23) all had career-best scoring outputs while Geddes Robinson pulled down a career-high 17 rebounds.

Imagine is Gus Johnson was calling that game.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great post, but you should know that there is no "State" in Utah Valley University's (UVU's) name. They did used to be Utah Valley State College, but dropped the "State" when they became a University.