Forward Zach Riedeman led the Tommies in rebounds, steals, blocks and points as the No. 14-ranked St. Thomas men’s basketball team grinded out a 65-56 win over Bethel University Wednesday night at Schoenecker Arena.
Riedeman led the team with 19 points, while guards Erik Tengwall and Marcus Alipate also added 15 and 10 points, respectively. However it was the Tommies’ defense that frustrated the Royals (12-9 overall, 8-8 MIAC) throughout the game and paved the way to the St. Thomas (17-3, 14-1 MIAC) victory.
“It all starts with defense for us. We illustrate that in practice everyday, and we work hard because we know our defense will bring easy opportunities on offense,” Tengwall said. “Keep people in front of us is what we try to do, make them take tough shots, rebound hard, and then run in transition.”
The teams traded blows for the majority of the first half. Though St. Thomas led by as many as seven points in the first frame, the Tommie shooters went cold in the final 10 minutes of the half and the teams went into halftime tied at 28.
“We didn’t shoot it great, certainly, especially in the first half our guys seemed a little tentative, which is probably a credit to their defense, but I also think we worked the kinks out in the second half,” coach John Tauer said.
The Tommies shot just 38.5 percent from the field in the first half, but the team picked up the slack on defense. Before Wednesday night’s game, St. Thomas had won its last 27 games when holding its opponent under 70 points, and the Tommies were determined to push that streak to 28.
“That’s going to be our focus right now, making stops on defense, and on our team, our philosophy is ‘you get stops on defense, that’ll lead to offense, lead to pushing the tempo, getting turnovers and fast break chances and all that,’” Riedeman said.
St. Thomas proved that shortly after halftime when Riedeman and center Conner Nord tallied steals on consecutive Bethel possessions, opening the door to an 8-0 St. Thomas run. The Tommies did not trail for the remainder of the game.
“We just kind of talked about getting the ball into the middle of the zone, and if you get the ball into the middle of the zone, everything else opens up,” Riedeman said. “Pregame, we said, ‘try to get the ball to the middle, and if you get it ten feet away from the hoop, you’ve got to put it up.’”
Riedeman led the Tommies in first half scoring with 10 points before adding nine more in the second half. However, Riedeman’s most impressive contribution was arguably his rebounding, where he led the team with eight rebounds, including five offensive boards.
Riedeman credited his success on the glass to Bethel’s zone defense.
“It’s a lot of open spaces (against a zone defense), and when the ball goes up, we talked about crashing the boards, and sometimes it just works out that way,” Riedeman said.
The victory keeps St. Thomas on the top of the MIAC and one game ahead of St. Olaf in the conference standings. With five games remaining in regular season conference play, the team is looking for a strong finish before heading into the postseason.
“I feel like the last three weeks we’ve really made a concerted effort to improve our intensity and our help on defense, and tonight was a further extension of that,” Tauer said. “It’s one of those late-season, gritty wins that isn’t a beautiful work of art, but you’re proud of it because Bethel is a great team. They play hard, they’re very well-coached, but our guys hung together and I’m very happy about that.”
Jacob Sevening can be reached at seve8586@stthomas.edu.