Armed with Experience, UMD Men’s Basketball Set for 3rd Go at NCAA Tournament

The madness begins on Saturday for the Bulldogs as they'll match up with Fort Hayes State, based out of the MIAA conference, in the first round.

DULUTH, Minn.- This isn’t the UMD men’s basketball team’s first rodeo at the NCAA tournament.

As a matter of fact, it’s their 3rd straight appearance in the big dance.

The madness begins on Saturday for the Bulldogs as they’ll match up with Fort Hayes State, based out of the MIAA conference, in the first round.

Both teams had similiar endings to their conference tournament runs as they each fell in the semifinal round.

Head Coach Justin Wieck says it helps that his team has been to the tournament before. But added, they still need to put in the work.

“They know what the expectation is. They know how intense those games are, how physical those games are. How hard it is to score. You look at our games last year, we were playing in the 50’s and 60’s, We’re going to be matched up with some good defensive teams, no matter who we play throughout this tournament. But that’s kind of what you get, you get the best of the best this time of the year. We need to be a lot sharper than we were last time out against Mankato. But I’ve seen our guys do it. They’ve done it throughout most out of the year, they’ve done it last year. So now it’s about trying to replicate that for fourty minutes on Saturday,” said Wieck.

As for what their opponent does well.

“They have two really good guys that we have been gearing up for this entire week. Very good defensive team. So we have our work cut out for us. But like I said with that experience. I think we’ll do our job and get the job done here,” said senior forward Charlie Katona.

“A lot of the time in practice we’ve been playing offense with six guys on defense. Kind of getting ready to face a more dominant defensive team. They have two guys on offense who can really score on offense too so if we can sit on defense and kind of take those scoring points away from them then we should be in a pretty good position,” added sophomore forward Mattie Thompson.

The Tigers and Bulldogs tip things off at noon on Saturday on the campus of Minnesota State-Mankato.