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Black Hills State men's basketball has announced that the start time of 7 p.m. for Tuesday's quarterfinal game against New Mexico Highlands.
The Yellow Jackets are the 2022 RMAC Regular Season Champions after finishing with a league-best 17-4 record while going 19-7 overall, giving them their highest win total since the Co-Regular Season Champion 2019-20 season when the team finished 17-5.
BHSU now enters the RMAC Tournament as the No. 1 seed and will host No. 8 seeded NMHU.
This is the fifth-straight season the men have made the tournament, and the fourth-straight of hosting a quarterfinal game.
This year, the program has received votes on national NCAA MBB Polls three times, most recently receiving a vote on the NABC Coaches Poll on Feb. 21 after receiving four votes on the Jan. 31 D2SIDA poll, and two votes on the Jan. 2 NABC Coaches Poll.
TICKETS
With the 7 p.m. start, doors to the gym will open at 6 p.m. tomorrow evening. Tickets are now available at
BHSUAthletics.com.
Tickets will be all general admission on a first-come, first-serve basis. Season passes will NOT be honored in postseason play.
Adult General Admission tickets will be $10, and Youth/Senior General Admission will be $5.
ABOUT NEW MEXICO HIGHLANDS
The Cowboys finished the 2021-22 season 15-13 overall and 10-12 in the RMAC to finish eighth in the RMAC as they enter the tournament as the No. 8 seed.
NMHU has had an up and down year, but are entering the RMAC Tournament red-hot. After going 5-1 in their non-conference schedule, NMHU went 1-10 to start league play. Since then, though, they have gone 9-2 down the stretch using an 8-game winning streak.
The Cowboys have the third-highest scoring offense in the RMAC, averaging 82.2 points per game, but they rank 13th in defense, allowing 78.2 ppg.
Their biggest strength has been in winning the turnover battle as they rank second in the RMAC in turnover margin (2.54) and third in steals per game (7.39), while also sitting fourth in blocks per game (3.46).
BHSU and NMHU split their two regular season games this year. The Yellow Jackets won the first meeting on Dec. 18, 2021, winning at home 91-69, but lost on the road later in the season, 83-74 on Feb. 12, 2022.
YELLOW JACKETS' LAST TIME OUT
Black Hills State men's basketball are the 2021-22 RMAC Regular Season Champions, clinching the title Saturday night with an 80-75 win over Metro State.
The Yellow Jackets (19-7, 17-4 RMAC) earn the title for the second time in three years, also finishing first in the RMAC in the 2019-20 season, tied with Dixie State.
Joel Scott led all scorers with 25 points, shooting 7-14 from the floor, to go with five rebounds and two steals.
Sava Dukic scored 15, sinking 5-of-6 from beyond the arc.
Adam Moussa had a team-high five rebounds and seven assists while tallying 14 points.
Sindou Cisse scored 13, grabbed five boards and dishing out three assists.
BHSU took an 11-10 lead to open the game before both offenses cooled, trading possessions over the next three minutes of play.
Tommy Donovan helped wake the offense up by making a layup at 12:56 during what would be a 9-0 run to extend the lead to 17-10.
Back-and-forth play took over from there as MSUD worked their way back to even the score at 21-all. A Cisse trey with five minutes to go put BHSU up 29-25, but the Roadrunners chipped away to hold a 40-36 lead at halftime.
Out of the break, the Yellow Jackets used threes from
Ryker Cisarik and Moussa to pull within two, 48-46, before another Moussa triple at 12:16 gave BHSU its first lead of the half, 54-53.
The Yellow Jackets held the lead from there, and kept the advantage as the clock ticked down thanks to a trio of big 3-pointers from Dukic as BHSU would lead 73-66 with 5:26 remaining.
Holding a 77-73 lead as the game entered its final minute of play, Scott and Moussa made free throws to seal the game.
COWBOYS' LAST TIME OUT
The New Mexico Highlands men's basketball went cold in the second half from beyond the arc and fell to South Dakota Mines 88-83 on Saturday at Wilson Complex.
However, the Cowboys still are in the RMAC Tournament after finishing 10-12 (15-13 overall), tied with Westminster for the last spot and owning the head-to-head tiebreaker with the Griffins. NMHU will take on No. 1-seed Black Hills State on Tuesday.
In the contest, the Cowboys led 50-47 at the half before falling behind by as much as nine points in the second half. NMHU cut the lead to one point at 84-83 after a Sammy Barnes-Thompkins bucket with 1:06 remaining.
But that's as close as the Cowboys got as SDM pulled away with the five-point win.
After going 10-for-22 from 3-point range in the first half, NMHU went 0-for-12 from 3-point range in the second half while the Hardrockers shot 63 percent (17-for-27) from the field in the second half.
Barnes-Thompkins led NMHU with 25 points in his final game as a Cowboy while fellow senior Marcus Brown had 14 points and senior Desmond Carpenter had 12 points, six rebounds and four steals. Eric Sonnenberg had 12 points and six rebounds off the bench for the Cowboys.
LAST MATCHUP: BHSU @ NMHU (Jan. 28, 2022)
Black Hills State men's basketball had three reach scoring milestones in Saturday's 83-74 loss to New Mexico Highlands.
The Yellow Jackets (16-7, 14-4 RMAC) also had two record double-doubles in the game as the team made 27.8 percent of their 36 attempted threes.
Adam Moussa led the offense with 21 points, going 5-of-8 from deep, to go along with 11 rebounds and three assists. This is his Moussa's third double-double of the season.
Joel Scott grabbed a team-high 16 rebounds with 20 points, an assist, a steal and a block for his 16th double-double of the season.
During Saturday's game, Scott scored his 500th point of the season to become the fifth Yellow Jacket to score 500 in a season, and gives him the eighth 500 point season in BHSU history.
Additional milestones in the game came from
Sindou Cisse and
Sava Dukic, each scoring their 500th career point.
Cisse surpassed the 500-point mark in his NCAA career with his eight points in the game. He had previously scored 571 points at the NJCAA level before transferring to BHSU prior to his junior season, and now sits at 1,075 total points.
Dukic also reached the 500-point milestone in the game, scoring five as he now sits at 503 career points.
BHSU grabbed its first lead early, 8-7 on a Scott jumper, but NMHU was able to keep up seemingly point-for-point. A few minutes later, the Cowboys traded threes with
PJ Hayes and the Yellow Jackets would trail 24-23 midway through the first.
Neither team led by more than four points in the back-and-forth opening half that saw seven lead changes and eight ties. As the clock ticked down in the first, a 3-point play from Scott helped BHSU retake the lead 34-33 before big points from Moussa down the stretch sent the Yellow Jackets into the locker room with a 45-44 lead.
Both teams traded points out of the break, and BHSU went up 55-54 on Scott layup, but NMHU would follow that with an 11-2 scoring run to move ahead 65-57 midway through second half.
Each offense cooled over the next several minutes, and although BHSU made a push in the final minutes with threes from Moussa and Cisse along with some free throws, the team would eventually fall, 83-74.
COACHES
Head coach
Ryan Thompson is in his fourth season leading the Yellow Jackets, having taken the program to the RMAC tournament each of the last three years. He was named RMAC Coach of the Year following the 2019-20 season.
Cowboys' Head Coach Mike Dominguez is entering his second season leading the team after he was the Associate Head Coach the two seasons prior.
A TUESDAY BHSU WIN WOULD...
Advance the Yellow Jackets to the semifinals to face the winner of either 4-seed UC Colorado Springs or 5-seed Colorado Mines. If BHSU advances, they would be the host school through the rest of the tournament.
A TUESDAY BHSU LOSS WOULD...
Eliminate the Yellow Jackets from the 2021-22 RMAC Tournament. The team would then wait for Selection Sunday on March 6 at 8 p.m. to learn if they will advance to the 2022 NCAA Tournament.
JOEL SCOTT SUPERLATIVES
Now in his junior season, Scott currently leads the nation in defensive rebounding, averaging 8.92 per game, and ranks top-10 in six statistical categories.
1st - Defensive Rebounds Per Game (8.92)
4th - Double-Doubles (17)
7th - Total Rebounds (281)
8th - Total Points (593)
9th - Points Per Game (22.8)
9th - Field Goals Made (218)
Additionally, Scott leads the RMAC in four different statistical categories and is top-3 in 12 categories.
DOUBLE-DOUBLES
The BHSU men's basketball team has recorded 20 individual double-doubles in the team's 23 games played to start the 2021-22 season.
Joel Scott has tallied a BHSU DII record 17 double-doubles this season. He was also the first to have a double-double in the first game of the season since Fraser Malcolm in 2017-18 season.
Scott has tallied 25 career double-doubles at BHSU, with a career-high 17 double-doubles this season after recording the feat four times in each his freshman and sophomore campaigns.
Adam Moussa recorded the first three double-doubles of his career this season, doing so on 11/24 at MSU Billings, 1/14 at Western Colorado, and 2/12 at N.M. Highlands.
HISTORY ON DECEMBER 3
Anyone who watched the Friday, Dec. 3 game against Western Colorado was saw something special.
Joel Scott had an historic game, breaking the school record for points in a game as he finished with 50 on the night, surpassing the previous record of 46 points set by Jeff Stevens in 1996. Coincidentally enough, Scott's record-tying 46th point of the night also put him past the 1,000-point threshold for his career.
As if that wasn't enough for one night, Scott wasn't even the game's leading scorer as Western Colorado's Matthew Ragsdale broke their school record with 53 points of his own. And to tie it all together, he and
Joel Scott were both teammates at the same high school, Lewis-Palmer H.S. in Monument, Colo.
-BHSUAthletics.com-
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