BISMARCK, ND – Playing out front from the first basket of the night, the University of Mary men's basketball team received clutch play throughout the lineup to down visiting St. Cloud State University 91-77 in Northern Sun action. Gertautas Urbonavicius scored a career-high 22 points with Kam Warrens adding 20 and Treyton Mattern 17 for the Marauders.
 
Playing with a frenetic pace on both ends of the court the Marauders used a 13-5 run to claim an early lead. Back to back baskets by Mattern and five points from Urbonavicius – including his first trey of the night – and UMary raced out to a 15-7 lead. A later 3 by Urbonavicius grew the Marauders lead to 28-15 to equal UMary's biggest lead of the first half.
 
St. Cloud State cut UMary's advantage to 36-28 before a Zyon Smith steal led to an Urbonavicius dunk at the other end of the court, regaining a double digit lead for the Marauders and once again igniting the home crowd. At intermission UMary held a 43-33 lead.
 
A 9-0 run to start the second half expanded the Marauders lead to 52-33 for the Marauders largest lead of the night.
 
Refusing to fade away the Huskies pulled within 68-60 before a Mattern trey stemmed the tide. After another SCSU basket cut into the UMary lead, a Warrens three rebuilt the Marauders lead back to double figures at 78-67.
 
Any forward progress by SCSU continued to be stymied by UMary 3-pointers. A clutch triple from Mattern that would do Steph Curry proud gave the Marauders an 85-73 lead with 2:37 to play. Warrens responded to a 4-0 SCSU run with a trey at 2:07 for an 88-77 UMary lead. Jeremiah Jones put the exclamation mark on the Marauders win with UMary's 11^th 3-pointer of the night to finalize the score at 91-77.
 
Urbonavicius was deadly from the floor, hitting 8-of-12 from the floor and 2-for-3 behind the arc. The senior forward also added nine rebounds and a pair of assists.
 
Warrens was 4-of-6 on 3s and 7-of-10 overall while making both free throws. The senior forward snared six rebounds and dished three assists.
 
Mattern distributed eight assists in the game to go with his 17 points. He made two of three shots from 3-point land and was 7-of-11 overall.
 
Smith just missed a double double with eight points and nine rebounds while dealing three assists. Jones gave UMary a third player with nine boards. The freshman added seven points and six assists.
 
Veljko Radakovic also had a career night for the Marauders, scoring 10 points off the bench. He sank 5-of-7 shots and helped UMary edge SCSU in paint points 38-36.
 
Matthew Willert led the Huskies with 19 points. Tony Dahl added 18. Both had four treys.
 
A highly-efficient UMary offense finished 11-for-22 behind the arc and shot a scintillating 59.6% overall for the game. SCSU shot just 43.1% for the game.
 
UMary also dominated on the boards, outrebounding the Huskies 44-24.
 
The Marauders wrap up their first Northern Sun doubleheader weekend on Saturday, December 10, when UMary hosts defending conference champion University of Minnesota Duluth at 5:30 pm in the McDowell Activity Center.
 
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