Box score
NEWARK, NJ—Junior captain Isaiah Wilkerson scored 16 of his game-high 21 points in the second half for NJIT, as the Highlanders, who trailed by two points at halftime, pulled away for a 65-49 victory over visiting North Dakota in Great West Conference men's basketball Thursday night in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
NJIT, which is 8-2 in its last 10 games, trailed after the first half, 20-18, but turned things around in the second half, outscoring North Dakota over the final 20 minutes, 47-29.
The win in what was arguably the biggest Division I game NJIT has ever played was the result of a remarkable turnaround on offense from the first half to the second half, combined with a stellar defensive effort over the whole 40 minutes.
The Highlanders, who began Division I competition in 2006-07 as an Independent and began playing in the Great West Conference last year, will surely play bigger games in the future. But Thursday's matchup with North Dakota was a head-to-head confrontation between two of the three remaining teams with just one Great West loss. Now, there are two—the Highlanders (4-1 Great West) and Utah Valley (6-1 Great West).
Both NJIT and North Dakota came in on significant rolls. As noted, NJIT was 7-2 in its previous nine, including two straight wins. North Dakota was also 7-2 in its last nine, including 6-1 in the previous seven, and the only loss was a quadruple overtime defeat vs. Utah Valley.
The offensive contrast between NJIT's first half and it second half on Thursday was stark. NJIT matched its season-low first-half scoring total with 18 points against North Dakota, shooting a dismal 20 percent from the field on 6-for-30, including 1-for-10 on 3-pointers.
NJIT's shooting woes were most apparent early, as the visitors scored the first seven points and grabbed an 11-1 lead after Jordan Allard's layup at 15:22 of the opening half. Chris Flores finally made the first basket of the night for the Highlanders at 15:01, but they didn't get their second bucket until Jheryl Wilson's tip-in at 11:47, making the score 14-7.
NJIT missed its first 6 shots from the field and opened the game and was 1-for-12 from the floor before the Wilson tip-in.
In the 47-point second half, NJIT made 14-of-23 shots from the field (60.9 percent), including 6-for-10 from beyond the arc.
On the defensive side, NJIT nearly overcame its poor first-half shooting by turning over the Fighting Sioux 13 times in the opening 20 minutes. North Dakota's 1-for-6 foul shooting in the period also helped the Highlanders limit the first-half deficit at 20-18.
NJIT continued to exert defensive control in the second half, holding UND to 32.3 percent shooting from the field (10-31) for a game total of 36.7 percent (18-49).
On top of that, North Dakota committed 11 more turnovers for a game-total of 24, matching Texas-Pan American (lost to NJIT, 79-60, on January 12) for the most miscues this season by a Highlander opponent.
NJIT, meanwhile, committed 13 turnovers in the game and the Highlanders had a big 26-12 advantage in points off of turnovers.
The end result was 49 points for the Fighting Sioux, tied for the second-lowest point total allowed this season by NJIT and overtaking UTPA's 60 points as the lowest total for a Division I opponent.
Wilkerson's individual game stats typified his team's stats against North Dakota. The swingman who has nine straight double-figure scoring games after netting 21 vs. UND, shot just 1-for-7 from the floor in the first half, but connected on 5-of-7 second-half shots from the field, with 11 of his points coming in the first 4:07 of the second half.
Wilkerson provided the spark as NJIT came out of the locker room on fire, as he nailed a three on the first possession to put the Highlanders on top, 21-20.
North Dakota's talented freshman and leading scorer for the season, Troy Huff, answered with a triple of his own to put the Fighting Sioux ahead by two. Huff finished with a team-best 12 points.
PJ Miller, who would get eight of his 10 points overall in the second half, responded to the Huff 3-pointer with back-to-back buckets for NJIT before UND's Brandon Brekke re-tied the score a final time at 25-25, 2:17 into the half.
Jamal Webb, who totaled 10 points on the night, made the second of two free throws on the next possession, giving North Dakota what would be its last lead of the game.
Wilkerson then scored eight points in 65 seconds in an 8-2 NJIT run and when Arjun Ohri, who scored all nine of his points in the second half, hit a 3-pointer with 14:43 left, the Highlanders had matched their first-half scoring total in the opening 5:17 of the second half.
Even though North Dakota was behind to stay, the Fighting Sioux hung in for the first five minutes and trailed by just two before Ohri's three that made the score 36-31 for NJIT.
However, Ohri's bucket triggered a 9-1 Highlander run that extended their lead to double-digits, 42-32, after Miller's layup at the 11:30 mark. To that point, the second-half score was 24-12 for the Highlanders.
North Dakota made one last push, putting seven points around another Ohri trey for NJIT and the Fighting Sioux closed to 45-39 on a Webb 3-pointer with 8:12 left. But NJIT answered that threat with an 8-0 outburst in a span of 2:22, going up 53-39 after Kherel Silcott's layup at 5:38.
Although they missed six free throws in the last three minutes, the Highlanders also made 10, getting their last 10 points at the foul line, including one by Chris Flores that gave them their biggest lead of the game—16 points—with 45 seconds left. Neither team scored after that.
NJIT senior Jheryl Wilson, who scored 8 points against North Dakota, upped his career total to 1,256, moving him past Reggie James (1,250 points from 1985-89) into ninth on the all-time Highlander list.
NJIT, which has won its last six home games, will host defending Great West Conference champion South Dakota on Saturday at 4 pm in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
The Coyotes, who captured both the regular season and postseason championships of the inaugural Great West season in 2009-10, will come to Newark on Saturday with a 12-11 overall record and a 4-2 mark in the Great West. They won at Chicago State on Thursday night, 75-71.
South Dakota swept both games from the Highlanders last year, 68-58 at the Prudential Center last February 25 and 83-49 in South Dakota in the regular season finale on March 7. The schools had never played before last season.
