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By Scott Puryear (Ozarks Sports Zone)
SPRINGFIELD — November basketball is one big learning experience for college teams from coast to coast, Missouri State coach Paul Lusk says.
On Sunday, after watching his Bears defeat North Dakota State 64-50 at JQH Arena, Lusk was pleased with a squad that clearly paid close attention to his latest teaching moment.
Unlike in Wednesday’s loss at DePaul, where the Bears squandered a 13-point lead in the second half, Missouri State closed out the opponent on Sunday after getting off to another fast start. The Bears (4-1) used a 15-0 run early in the first half to build a 17-4 advantage, and turned away repeated attempts by the Bison (5-2) in the second half to try to cut the deficit below 10 points.
How? By playing what Lusk called their best defensive effort of the season to overcome their worst offensive performance of the young campaign. The Bears held the Bison to 37 percent shooting, including a 5-for-19 effort from 3-point range, and forced 15 turnovers.
The biggest individual boost for the Bears came courtesy of 6-foot-9 junior Alize Johnson, who led MSU with 17 points and added a game-high 10 rebounds for his second double-double in six games. Johnson, a junior college transfer, managed just five points and two rebounds in 17 minutes in the loss at DePaul.
“It was about me getting back to that aggressive, attack mode,” Johnson said. “That’s what I tried to do this game. Last game, I don’t think I was locked in as much as I should have been.”
“He had a good game, and that’s what we need from him,” Lusk said of Johnson. “He’s got to be engaged, and he had a great bounce-back. He thought it was all going to be easy like it was the first couple of games, and it didn’t happen that way for him last game out. I thought he really bounced back and did some good things.”
On Sunday, Johnson’s personal 10-0 run – a pair of short jumpers mixed with two 3-pointers – was the spark that ignited that 15-0 Bears surge that produced the 17-4 early lead. Missouri State went on to lead 38-21 at the half and never let NDSU closer than 10 in the second half.
“We have not been able to maintain our defensive intensity for 40 minutes,” Lusk said. “At DePaul, we guarded about as well as we can guard for the first half of the game, then we had breakdowns in the second half … we were up 13 with eight minutes left and thought the game was over. You have to keep playing.
“I was very pleased today with our approach, our response.”
The Bears maintained that intensity on Sunday, particularly in holding the hot-shooting Bison backcourt of A.J. Jacobson and Paul Miller in check.
Jacobson was leading the nation in 3-point FG percentage coming in (13 of 16, 81 percent). He went 1-for-3 from behind the arc and finished with just three points, while Miller was 0 for 6 on treys and had nine points, six below his season average of 15.
“Up to this point, if a guy has been at the top of our scouting report, we haven’t been able to shut those guys down. Today, I thought (Ryan) Kreklow and the team did a great job on Paul Miller as well as A.J. Jacobson.
“They’re good defensively, too. They’re going to win games. This is going to be a good (win) for us at the end of the year.”
Khy Kabellis had 19 points to lead NDSU.
Dequon Miller had 12 points and three steals and Ronnie Rousseau III added 10 points for the Bears, who made just 7 of 23 3-point tries (30 percent), but outscored the Bison 13-1 at the free-throw line.
Missouri State returns to the road on December 3rd at Air Force before a December 7 trip to Southeast Missouri State. The Bears are home again on December 10 vs. Valparaiso.
