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Rise and Shine: Summit Showdown

By Sam Federman

Photo by Mary Pritchard - Omaha Athletics
Photo by Mary Pritchard - Omaha Athletics

The game of the night in college basketball is in Omaha, Nebraska, but it's not downtown.


Five miles as the crow flies, or eight miles in your car, away from the CHI Health Center, the Omaha Mavericks will take on the St. Thomas Tommies at Baxter Arena, the biggest game for the Mavs in a long time.


For the first time ever, Omaha is 5-0 in the Summit League. Year three under Chris Crutchfield, who played for the Mavs from 1989 to 1992, has been a huge success, building on the progress of last year despite losing Frankie Fidler to the transfer portal.


UNO had won just seven conference games in the final two years on Derrin Hansen, and Crutchfield inherited a difficult situation, so he went just 4-14 in year one. He returned most of the team for year two, and improved to 7-9, but this year's team is looking to blow past those marks.


Marquel Sutton, who joined Crutchfield for his first season at Omaha as a JUCO transfer, has blossomed into one of the Summit's top players, averaging 16.4 points and 7.3 rebounds per game this season. Of the four players putting up double figures for the Mavs, JJ White has taken the biggest jump during league play, averaging 16.2 points and 4.4 assists over the 5-0 stretch.


White, like Sutton, came from the JUCO ranks in Crutchfield's first year, and has been a staple for Omaha since. Four of Omaha's top six players joined the program for Crutchfield's first year, and are now experiencing success in year three.


While Omaha searches for its first NCAA Tournament appearance this season, St. Thomas can't even be part of the party. The Tommies are in the final year of the transition period from Division III, but are plenty good enough to win the bid if they were permitted.


Winners of 11 of its last 12 games, St. Thomas is also 5-0 in the Summit League, boasting the top offense in the nation's top offensive league. UW-Whitewater transfer Miles Barnstable is the leading scorer, and he shoots pretty well from three, at 35% on good volume, but it pales in comparison to his teammates. St. Thomas has five players shooting 43% or higher with at least 15 made threes, including 6 foot 9 sophomore Carter Bjerke, who is shooting 43.4% on 5.3 attempts per game, despite playing just a shade over 20 minutes per contest.


St. Thomas is the No. 6 three-point shooting team in the country, at 39.8%, but that number is all the way up to 45.9% in conference play. In a road win at North Dakota State, the Tommies made 15 of 32 threes, and in a home win over South Dakota, UST shot 14-27 from three and scored 119 points.


The game is at 8 p.m. eastern, and is streaming behind a paywall on MidCo Sports Plus, which means very few people outside of the Summit League's orbit will even know it's happening. And that's a shame.

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