by By Andrew Sogn, SDSU Communications
South Dakota State men’s basketball turned in a dominant performance Friday night inside Frost Arena, toppling Minnesota Morris, 112-47.
All 11 Jackrabbits who saw the court found their way into the scoring column, with seven from the Yellow and Blue reaching double figures.
David Wingett (Winnebago) notched his first career double-double with a team-high 18 points and 10 rebounds. Zeke Mayo added 14 and joined Charlie Easley and Alex Arians with four assists.
Matt Mims and Baylor Scheierman paced the team with five dishes each, as Mims, Matt Dentlinger and Easley finished with 11 points.
Douglas Wilson, who pulled down nine boards and had three alley-oop finishes, matched Arians with 10 points to close out the top scorers.
Jaylon Gentry hit three 3-pointers off the bench and finished with a career-best nine points.
The Jackrabbits (8-2) used a balanced attack in the win, outscoring the Cougars by 30 inside the paint while adding 17 3-pointers. Additionally, SDSU turned 20 UMN Morris turnovers into 28 points and shared the ball well, recording 27 assists on 45 made field goals.
The Jacks took control early with nine unanswered out of the gate and never looked back. Easley’s layup at 11:49 opened a 12-0 spurt that gave the home squad a 30-6 advantage. UMN Morris stopped the run after Arians’ triple near the eight-minute mark, but couldn’t slow an SDSU attack that shot 57% in the opening frame.
Wilson closed the first half scoring an emphatic dunk with 33 seconds on the clock to join South Dakota State’s 1,000-point club as the Jackrabbits led by 23 (56-23) at the break.
A 17-4 run put the game out of reach with 15 minutes to play in the contest. Easley, Scheierman and Arians had 3s during the burst, and Wilson added a pair of dunks. Gentry scored his first points of the night at 8:34, opening a string of seven consecutive 3s for SDSU as the Jackrabbits went over the century mark.
