Saints run away from the Lights

The Carroll College Fighting Saints were hot, the Montana State University-Northern Lights were not. That pretty much sums up what happened to the Lights Friday night, in their final game of a six-game Frontier Conference home stand.

The No. 13 Fighting Saints shot an incredible 69 percent from the field in a 64-48 win over the Lights in front of a big crowd at the Armory Gymnasium. The loss dropped the Lights to 5-5 in the Frontier, and ended their six-game run at 3-3.

And while losses like Friday’s are never easy to handle, Northern head coach Shawn Huse put things in perspective for his team.

“I told the guys not to beat themselves up about this one,” Huse said. “Hats off to Carroll, they shot it really well. It’s tough to stop when a team’s shooting it that well, and we just never got it clicking. Those kinds of nights happen.”

It certainly happened to the Lights, especially in the second half of Friday’s rivalry game.

Northern did well to hang with the Saints in the first 20 minutes. Carroll had raced out to an early nine-point lead, but 3-pointers from Devin Bray and Tyler Chandler, as well as two buckets by Ryan Reeves, helped the Lights cut the Saints’ lead to just 26-20 at halftime.

“With how we were struggling offensively, to only be down six at halftime,” Huse said. “We were fine with that. We were right there. But Carroll just kept shooting it better and better, and it was just really tough to slow them down.”

No doubt. The Saints came right out of the halftime break and upped the lead to 32-20 in less than two minutes. Big shots by Chandler and Dylan Tatarka stemmed the tide more a brief moment, but the Saints ripped off a 10-0 run from there, which part of a 20-6 spurt, and at the 7:19 mark, they had ballooned the lead to 50-30. Northern did what it could to fight back, but the Saints kept coming, as Ryan Imhoff and Zach Taylor hit seemingly shot-after-shot, and those buckets just never would allow the Lights to mount any kind of charge.

“I thought, where we were at halftime, that the offense would start clicking better in the second half,” Huse said. “But it just never happened. And you have to give Carroll credit again. We didn’t shoot it very well, but I thought they defended really well. They just put together a very complete game against us tonight.”

Complete for certain. The Saints, winner’s of eight straight games, missed just 13 field goal attempts the entire night. Included in that was Imhoff, who went 13-of-15 from the floor for a game-high 26 points. Oliver Carr missed just two shots as well, on his way to 17 points, and the same held true for Taylor, who went 7-of-9 from the floor for 16 points and Carroll’s only two 3-pointers.

Conversely, the Lights shot just 39 percent from the field and 39 percent from three. Those numbers were well below the Lights’ 50 percent they shot in a win over UGF Thursday night. Tatarka did continue his fine play with 12 points, while Chandler added six and Bray and David Straughter chipped in with five each.

But even as well as Carroll blistered the nets in Northern’s home gym, the Lights are still getting out of Havre in good standing in the Frontier. Northern starts a six-game road trip this Thursday at Rocky Mountain College alone in fourth place, and still just one game behind third-place Lewis-Clark State. Carroll and Western are tied atop the standings at 8-1, and the Lights visit the Bulldogs Saturday night.

“I told the guys, we played well all weekend,” Huse said. “We played a great game against UGF, and I thought tonight, we played well, we just ran into a team who played better. So I told them, we just have to learn from these games, the good and the bad and move on. There’s a lot of season left, and now we get to go out on the road and keep battling. That’s what we’re going to do, keep improving and keep battling. There’s a lot of season still to play.”

There is a lot of season. The Lights have eight games left, including wrapping up the regular season at home Feb. 24-25 against Rocky and Western.

Lights are 5-5 in Frontier, 16-6 overall; Next Up: at RMC Thursday

Carroll 64, Lights 48

CC - Dane WARP 0-1 0-0 0, Steven HELM 0-3 0-0 0, Zach TAYLOR 7-9 0-0 16, Lorel JOHNSON 0-0 1-2 1, Ryan IMHOFF 13-15 0-0 26, Matt WYMAN 1-3 0-0 2, Ife KALEJAIYE 0-1 0-0 0, Oliver CARR 8-10 1-1 17, Alejandro SANTOS PIQUERAS 0-0 2-2 2, Kyle NICKOL 0-0 0-0 0, Connor SCHENK 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 29-42 4-5 64.

MSU-N - Cameron Epps 2-6 0-0 4, Adam Huse 1-2 0-0 3, Badhasa Margarsa 0-2 0-0 0, Kevin Oberweiser 0-2 0-0 0, Devin Bray 2-3 0-0 5, David Straughter 1-3 2-3 5, Dylan Tatarka 2-4 7-9 12, Justin Dunsmore 1-4 0-0 3, Charles Porter 1-3 0-0 2, Tyler Chandler 2-4 0-0 6, Seth Christiaens 1-1 0-0 2, Ryan Reeves 2-4 0-0 4, William Walker 1-3 0-0 2. Totals 16-41 9-12 48.

Halftime: Carroll 26-20. 3-pt FG: CC 2-4 (HELM 0-1, TAYLOR 2-3), MSU-N 7-18 (Epps 0-1, Huse 1-1, Margarsa 0-2, Oberweiser 0-2, Bray 1-2, Straughter 1-1, Tatarka 1-3, Dunsmore 1-2, Chandler 2-4). Rebounds: CC 22 (TEAM 6), MSU-N 17 (Bray 3, Chandler 3). Fouls: CC 16, MSU-N 11. Fouled out: JOHNSON.