2008-2009 Season Review

BEAVERS WIN 20 - PLAY FOR CONFERENCE TITLE

The Minot State University men’s basketball team continued its winning ways during the 2008-09 season. The Beavers finished the year at 20-11 and played for the Dakota Athletic Conference championship for the second consecutive year.

Tough Schedule: The Beavers played the 10th toughest schedule in the nation according to MasseyRatings.com. The best win of the season came in mid-December when the Beavers avenged an earlier loss to Rocky Mountain College who went on to win the NAIA-I National Championship. The Beavers also split with MSU-Northern who also qualified for the NAIA I National Tournament. Minot State had a great battle with the University of Calgary before giving way in the final two minutes. Calgary went on the final four in the Canadian National Tournament. After beating MSU for the DAC title Black Hills State went on to the NAIA-II final four. During the regular season BHSU banked in a buzzer-beating three to win by two in Minot and MSU missed a three at the buzzer at that would have given them the win in the Black Hills. In all Minot State played 15 games against teams that won at least 17 games during the season.

Home-court Disadvantage?: Minot State struggled at home. MSU went 3-4 on their home-court during the conference season while going 5-2 on the road. Including a thrilling overtime win at Dickinson State in the semifinals of the DAC tournament all six of Minot’s road wins versus conference opponents were by double digits.

Statistical Rankings: MSU led the nation in turnover margin at +5.77 per game. Unfortunately the Beavers also led the country in fouls per game. With their pressing style of defense Minot was 2nd in the nation in steals per game. Offensively the Beavers only shot 42.6 percent from the field including an eleven year low of 33.5 percent from the three-point arc. All those missed shots helped MSU rank 12th nationally in offensive rebounding.

National Ratings: Minot State ranked in the Top 20 by four different computer ratings including 14th by the Massey MOV system. Unfortunately the NAIA raters did not agree as the Beavers ranked 29th in the final NAIA National Poll. MSU just missed gaining an at-large berth to the national tournament as they were the second highest rated team to not qualify for the national tournament.

Key Players: Graduating are two-time all-conference standouts Aaron Patterson and C.J. DeWitty. Patterson led the DAC in scoring at 18.9 points per game earning him first-team all-conference honors. DeWitty gained second-team honors for ranking 3rd in scoring, 3rd in steals and 4th in assists. Junior, Mister Carney was a third-team all-conference selection and was selected as the conference Defensive Player of the Year for leading the DAC (6th nationally) in steals. Kenneth McCoy, a junior, was 2nd in the DAC and 15th nationally in offensive rebounding.

Coach Hultz’s Comments: “I believe this was only the third time the school has won 20 games (1972, 2005) and yet we feel we came up short. Our schedule was filled with some really good basketball teams this year so that made it tough. None-the-less we played poorly at home and that cost us. We did some very good things defensively and had some guys that could get something done on the offensive end of the floor. However, we lacked an inside scoring threat, were inconsistent from the three-point arc and as a group our shot selection was poor at times. We feel we should have gotten more respect from the national raters and been invited to the national tournament but in the same breath know we didn’t take care of business as we should have. We feel good about the future as we have several good players returning and we hope they will be a hungry to get our program back to Branson.”