The University of Denver men’s basketball team (13-13, 4-9) faced the St. Thomas Tommies (16-10, 7-6) Saturday afternoon at Hamilton Gym. Going into the game, Denver had to match the 8.6 three-point makes per game for St. Thomas and stop leading scorers, freshman Andrew Rohde and Parker Bjorklund. The Tommies were 11 of 27 from distance and Rohde and Bjorklund went 15 and 19 points, respectively. That essentially ended any hope Denver had down the stretch.
It was the Tommy Bruner show in the first half with 18 points in the first 20 minutes as the Pioneers trailed at half, 30-28. The Tommies were firing from range, hitting 6 of 17 shots behind the arc, while DU was 1/6. St. Thomas was led Parker Bjorklund with 9 points. St Thomas hit 38% from the field and Denver struggled at 31% as a number of close-in shots missed the mark.
St. Thomas opened the second half shooting at distance yet again. While they missed their first two efforts from beyond the arc, the Tommies heated up, building a double-digit lead at 48-38 at 11:12 of the half. Once St. Thomas opened up the inside, they started to put on a smooth inside-out game, exploiting the Denver defense. The Tommies hit 5 more three-point makes in the half. Denver had chances to narrow the margin but stops and turnovers thwarted any serious comeback attempts.
Final score 68-57, St. Thomas.
Next up for Denver is a road trip to North Dakota on Thursday and a Saturday match-up against North Dakota State.
Dunker watched. Bad matchup for us. Still, if we’d connected on some missed easy field goals, we would have been in it until the end. Energy appeared to be lacking, I expected that after the previous game.