UMD No Match for Gophers
November 6, 2014
The University of Minnesota men’s basketball team officially opened its 2014-2015 basketball season by taking apart a squad of young men representing the University of Minnesota at Duluth (UMD) in an exhibition game on November 6 at Williams Arena. The final score was 95-68. Attendance was an announced crowd of 11,440.
UMD comes from a loosely-knit amalgam of Division II four-year institutions known as the Northern Sun Conference including respectable basketball programs such as those assembled in the communities of Winona and Mankato and less-thriving teams representing Upper Iowa, Mary, Minot State, and UMC. The Northern Sun is the catch-all conference for Upper Midwest teams both great and small, sort of an island of misfit toys. UMD basketball sits somewhere in the middle of the island. Once formidable, the program now places a distant third to hockey and football in the Port City. UMD enrollment is nearly 12,000, and only students who can’t get hockey tickets attend Bulldog basketball games at Romano Gymnasium.
Past Bulldog basketball teams drew players from northeastern Minnesota and the Duluth metro area. Today’s UMD roster sports five players from Arizona and California including star off-guard Brendon Pineda. Even so, the Bulldogs clearly proved to be no match for Richard Pitino’s Gophers, picked by some to rank as high as fourth in the 14-team Big Ten Conference. So confident was Pitino against UMD that he benched starters Joey King and Elliot Eliason in favor of rookies Josh Martin and Bakary Konate. He was rewarded by seeing them both foul out. No problem. There were others, including juco Carlos Morris who stepped up and patched deficiencies.
UMD was powerless from the onset and fell behind at halftime, 46-25. Only Pineda, a junior from Phoenix, with nine points displayed any Bulldog spirit. Morris and a revitalized Daquein McNeil each had 10 points for the Gophers at the break. After Taylor Lavery hit on a three-point basket attempt in the second half, the Bulldogs narrowed the margin to 50-33, but a Morris basket set things right, and the Gophers were rolling again. Midway through the period, King hit a pair of free throws for Minnesota’s biggest lead at 75-43.
Morris finished with 23 points, followed by McNeil and King with 15 each. Minnesota had five players in double figures. Pineda led Bulldog scorers with 17 points. Lavery had 15. Eliason led all rebounders with 16 boards.
Pitino now turns his attention to a year-long anticipated match with his father’s Louisville Cardinals November 14 at the Armed Forces Classic game in Puerto Rico. The game, to be televised on ESPN, will determine supremacy in the Pitino house as well as being a barometer for future Gopher success. Minnesota has already met another ranked team in the NCAA pre-season polls, Iowa State. Although closed to the public, rumors are flying that the Gophers lost that scrimmage by 25 points.