Box score

GRAND FORKS, ND—North Dakota shot better than 71 percent from the floor in the second half and all five of its starters finished with double-figure point totals, as ND stopped visiting NJIT, 80-63, in Great West Conference men's basketball Thursday night.
 
North Dakota, the 2011 Great West Conference Tournament champion, raised its home record this season to 9-1, its 2011-12 Great West record to 1-1 and its overall record to 9-10 with the win over the Highlanders.
 
North Dakota's top scorer Thursday was sophomore Jamal Webb, who finished with 16 points. Classmate Troy Huff added 15 points and would have had more if not for 3-for-8 foul shooting by the lanky wing player who came in shooting better than 68 percent at the line through the season's first 18 games.
 
Webb and Huff each scored 10 second-half points as the home team expanded on its 33-25 halftime lead to as many as 19 points late in the game.
 
North Dakota's Patrick Mitchell scored 13 points, with the last two, a pair of free throws with 49 seconds left, raising his career total to exactly 1,000 points.
 
Mitchell, a senior who is joined in his team's starting lineup by four sophomores, will likely remember playing against NJIT for the rest of his life. In North Dakota's first-ever game against NJIT in February 2009, also in Grand Forks, he set a school record by making 10 3-pointers and finished with a career-best 33 points in a 90-78 win.
 
Although Mitchell clearly has had a good career, he had not fared well since the career-game the first time he played against NJIT. In the intervening four games vs. the Highlanders, all NJIT wins, Mitchell scored a combined 17 points, including a scoreless night in last year's 59-52 win for the Highlanders in Grand Forks.
 
Thursday night, North Dakota snapped its four-game losing streak in its series with NJIT, Mitchell scored his 1,000th point, and he also led ND with 10 rebounds, sharing game honors with Highlander senior Isaiah Wilkerson, who also led all scorers with 20 points.
 
North Dakota center Brandon Brekke collected 10 points on 4-for-5 shooting and the winners just missed getting a sixth double-figure scorer, as sophomore guard Josh Schuler coming off the bench for nine points.
 
NJIT, 9-10 overall, saw the end of its season-best three-game winning streak that included victories in the opening two Great West Conference games.

Wilkerson, who played his 100th career game, raised his career scoring total to 1,365, making him the top scorer in NJIT's Division I era (since 2006-07). He passed former teammate Jheryl Wilson, who compiled 1,359 points between 2007 and 2011. Wilkerson ranks eighth on NJIT's overall all-time list. He is also the program's Division I career rebounding leader with 518 (Wilson also held that mark at 492 rebounds).

In addition to Wilkerson's game-high 20 points and 10 rebounds, the first double-double of 2011-12 for the NJIT captain, the Highlanders got 12 points apiece from Chris Flores and Ryan Woods, but not much in the way of scoring from anyone else.
 
Outside of the three double-figure scorers, however, the other nine Highlanders who played combined for 19 points and five of them did not score at all.
 
Senior Sammy Schickel, who came off the bench to shoot 2-for-4, was the only NJIT player to connect on as many as half of his shots and the Highlanders finished 22-for-61 (36.1 percent) from the field.
 
North Dakota finished the game at 50 percent (27-for-54), including a sizzling 15-for-21 (71.4 percent) in the second half.
 
The night began well NJIT, which fell behind 2-0 and 4-3, but then recovered for an 11-4 lead after Wilkerson nailed a 3-pointer less than four minutes in. Another Wilkerson three gave NJIT a 16-8 advantage with 13:14 remaining in the opening half.
 
However, the Highlanders, who reached 16 points in the opening 6:46 of the half, would manage just nine more points over the remaining 13:14 and trailed at the break, 33-25.
 
Even in building the 16-8 lead, NJIT made just five of its 12 shots. But things got worse, as the Highlanders shot just 4-for-20 in scoring nine points over the last 13:14.
 
Even with those shooting woes, the lead not change hands to North Dakota until a Mitchell 3-pointer gave North Dakota a 21-18 advantage with 6:32 left in the first half.
 
The Highlanders still trailed by just two points, 25-23, after Schickel's three with 3:19 left in the half. But North Dakota gained the upper hand with an 8-2 run the rest of the way to halftime.
 
An imporatn factor in NJIT's inability to score enough to hold its lead, or even to stay closer in the first half, was foul trouble. Three Highlander starters, including Wilkerson, who scored 11 first-half points, and Flores, who scored five, spent significant time on the bench after accumulating two early fouls. Wilkerson played 10 minutes and Flores played 12 in the first half.
 
Although Flores fouled out and Wilkerson finished with four fouls, they each saw more playing time in the second half (15 minutes for Flores and 17 for Wilkerson). On top of that, Woods came alive, scoring all 12 of his points in the second half.
 
Woods scored seven of the points in a span of 4:20 early in the second half, including a 3-pointer that trimmed the North Dakota lead to 37-33 with 17:29 remaining.
 
But it's impossible to make a successful comeback without defensive stops and NJIT had very few stops in a second half that included only six misses in 21 shots by the home team. Agains that backdrop, the Highlanders were essentially trading scores when they made shots and falling farther  back when they didn't.
 
Another Woods basket, a driving layup, gave NJIT an impressive 10 points in the first 4:29 of the second half, but that surge had cut just two points off North Dakota's eight-point halftime lead, trimming the score from 33-25 at the break to 41-35 with 15:31 left.
 
With its lead down to six, ND went on a 9-2 run over the next 3:50--seven of the points in the run coming from Webb, whose triple at the 12:01 mark gave his team a 15-point lead, 52-37.
 
The Highlanders later closed back to within eight, 55-47, on a Flores layup with 9:34 on the clock, but back-to-back layups by Huff and a 3-pointer by Schuler, all in the span of 45 seconds, pushed the North Dakota bulge back to 15 with 8:14 left and the home team was on top by at least 12 for the remainder of the game.
 
Having lost the first leg of its two-game road trip to defending GWC Tournament champion North Dakota, NJIT will travel on Friday to Utah. On Saturday at 7:05 pm (MST), the Highlanders will take on 2010-11 GWC regular season champion and this year's conference coaches' preseason favorite Utah Valley. UVU opened conference play this season with a 72-64 home win over North Dakota on January 21.