A second-half spark helped propel the Northern State Men’s Basketball team to its first win of the season Tuesday night.

The Wolves used a late surge to secure an 81-71 non-conference victory over Dakota State at Wachs Arena.

The Wolves were down 54-47 with just under 11 minutes remaining in the game. A foul to send James Glenn to the free-throw line kick started a 24-5 run over the span of six and a half minutes, which gave Northern the push it needed to claim the win.

In that span, the Wolves duo of James Glenn and Kwat Abdelkarim shot a perfect 6-of-6 from the 3-point line.

“Obviously, got a huge lift from James, and then Kwat, but that’s just part of it,” said Northern coach Saul Phillips.

Glenn accounted for 14 of the 24 points in that span, going 4-for-4 from 3-point land, and 2-for-2 from the free-throw line. He ended with 34 points on the night, including 26 in the second half.

“The first couple go in, and it starts to feel pretty good. You just start to hunt them down a little bit,” said Glenn. “The rest of the team was doing a great job trying to help me and get me in the right spots, get the ball in my hands at the right spot. They did that perfectly, gave me a couple good looks, and it went down.”

Before the Wolves dug themselves out of a hole, they were riddled with a few too many turnovers, and a few too many fouls. The Wolves finished with 19 fouls on the night and turned the ball over 14 times.

“Gotta stop fouling as much as we are, gotta turn the ball over less,” said Phillips. “And when those two things come, I think we got a pretty good chance to be pretty good.”

Fouling and turnovers weren’t the only reason Northern fell behind. A strong first half from Dakota State gave the Trojans a 38-34 lead going into halftime. A large part of that was due to a bit of a homecoming for some Dakota State players, namely Lane Tietz and Isaac Sumption.

“It’s rare you just walk in and knock someone out, and stay on them the whole game, at any level. And especially when you got a bunch of kids on their team with local ties, this means a lot to them,” Phillips said. “Tietz played like a champion today, he did. He was terrific. Sumption played well today. He was terrific.”

Tietz, a former Groton Tiger, and Sumption, a former Leola-Frederick Titan, felt at home with their own cheering section at Wachs Arena.

“I kind of grew up here. Going to team camps, and going to the Northern games, State B’s obviously. And so it was really cool. I had actually never played on the actual court, other than a team camp or something like that. So that was a cool experience,” said Tietz. “The Groton people really showed out, and other teammate, Isaac Sumption, he had a good crowd too there. It was fun to see everyone come and support for sure.”

Tietz was the Trojans’ leading scorer and rebounder tonight. Coming off the bench, he put up 15 points, and five rebounds, which created a buzz throughout the arena every time he made something happen.

“It was awesome,” Tietz said. “It took me a little bit to get warm, but then I got it going and it was fun.”

Another key factor for Northern in the victory, something not always found on a stat sheet, was the Wolves’ defensive effort.

True freshman, Marcus Burks, has stepped into that role defensively, something Phillips is glad to see.

“It’s unusual for a freshman to be your defensive lockdown guy. And it’s funny, ‘cause you look at the stat sheet and his shooting numbers weren’t great. He had six assists, but he also had four turnovers,” said Phillips. “But the impact he had on the defensive end changed the game.”

The home opener at Wachs Arena started off a little slow for the Wolves, but they were able to change the momentum when they needed to.

“Took us a little bit longer, and it started to click in the second half. You never really want it to click in the middle of the game, but we’re thankful that it did at some point,” Glenn said. “We knew what we could do. We knew the shots that we were supposed to be getting. And we finally started getting to them in the second half, and I don’t know, we started playing as we knew we could.”

It was Glenn’s first game at Wachs Arena and he made the most of it.

“Man, it’s awesome. I can’t get enough of this place, it’s awesome,” said Glenn. “It’s really, really unbelievable, the atmosphere’s great. It’s hard to pass this up on a visit.”

The Wolves have one more preseason game, playing at Jamestown on Saturday before opening Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference action on Tuesday hosting Mary at 7 p.m. at Wachs Arena.

To see a complete box score, click on the following link:

https://nsuwolves.com/sports/mens-basketball/stats/2024-25/dakota-state/boxscore/13756