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OGDEN — Prior to Thursday, Weber State’s last victory over North Dakota came on Jan. 7, 2016.
For the Wildcats, it was a streak of four straight losses, with the most recent coming earlier this season in Grand Forks, when North Dakota shot a season-high 52.4 percent from behind the 3-point line to defeat the Wildcats 89-79.
But on Thursday, Weber State used 17 free throws as part of a 53-point second half outburst to exact revenge over North Dakota 84-76 and win its sixth-straight victory since losing to the Hawks on Jan. 13.
“It feels really good to get them back from that W. when we was up there,” Brekkott Chapman said.
Four Wildcats finished in double figures, including Zach Braxton and Jerrick Harding, who finished with 22 and 21 points, respectively.
Ryan Richardson finished with 13 points on 4-of-7 shooting, and Chapman registered his third double-double (19 points, 12 rebounds) of the last seven games, while also leading the team in both rebounds and assists (five).
“My coaches and my teammates just kept pushing me and pushing me to keep being aggressive in practice every single day,” Chapman said of his season-best performance. “I just tried to translate that to the game tonight, and it worked.”
Despite outshooting the visiting Hawks from the field (48 to 37 percent) and from three (50 to 33 percent) in the first half, Weber State carried a narrow 31-29 lead at the intermission after allowing eight points off seven turnovers.
Dale Jones and Connor Avants did most of the work for North Dakota in a sloppy opening 20 minutes, combining for 23 of the Hawks’ 29 first-half points and seemingly having an answer for everything Weber State did early.
“We were kind of back on our heels and they were the aggressor,” Braxton said of his team’s first-half struggles. “We went in at halftime and talked about ‘we gotta be the aggressor, we gotta have more energy.’ You can’t let (North Dakota) come on to your floor and have more juice than you have.”
“Sometimes you play teams where you just don’t match up very well," Weber coach Randy Rahe said. "This has been a team the last year or two that we just have not matched up well with. The way they play bothers us. … I thought it slowed us down how they played us.”
The Wildcats finally pulled away after a Chapman-led sequence late in the second half. Trailing 52-50 with 11:04 remaining, the junior forward knocked down his third 3-pointer of the game, fired up the crowd with a thunderous block on Avants and found Braxton for a dunk off a dump pass that gave WSU a 59-53 lead, its largest of the game to that point, with 9:10 remaining.
You may want to watch these highlights and relive that win! #WeAreWeberpic.twitter.com/QqVlyyeHcp
— WeberStateMBB (@WeberStateMBB) February 11, 2018
Harding then punctuated the frenetic sequence by rising for a dunk in transition that saw him nearly hurdle a backpedaling North Dakota defender to extend the lead to eight and ignite the 6,275 fans in attendance at the Dee Events Center.
“He almost dunked on me,” joked Chapman, who served as something of a lead blocker for Harding on the play. “I had to get out of the way.”
Later, with the game tied at 69 with 2:44 remaining, the Wildcats slammed the door by outscoring the Hawks 15-7 down the stretch, including 8-11 from the charity stripe.
“We got some stops, we were able to break away a little bit,” Rahe said. “Sometimes you’ve just got to find a way. It was kind of an ugly game, and sometimes you’ve got to win ugly. They’re not always gonna be pretty.”
Dillon Anderson is studying literary journalism as a student at the University of Utah. You can follow him on Twitter @DillonDanderson.
