It started early and never ended Saturday evening at Wachs Arena.

Minot State repeatedly broke down the Northern State defense for high-percentage shots and walked away with a 91-79 Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference men’s basketball victory.

“That game was a hundred percent about our ability to guard Minot State,” said NSU coach Matt Wilber. “Right out of the first possession, they got whatever they wanted. … I feel really responsible, every part of it, our game plan, how we guarded it, all of it wasn’t good. I thought Minot State was really good tonight.”

The Beavers scored 10 unanswered points in the first six minutes of the contest for a lead they never lost.

Northern stayed within striking distance for the majority of the opening half and the Wolves trailed 24-21 when Minot’s second scoring surge of the half gave the visitors a double-digit cushion it held until late in the game. The Beavers turned a 30-24 edge into a 43-28 halftime advantage, thanks in part to a coast-to-coast layup at the buzzer.

“We fought back and then we ended the half as badly as we could,” Wilber said. “The last two minutes we were kind of fluttering with 5-6-7-8 (point-deficit) the first half and then it ended up 15 going into the second half.”

While the Wolves exploded for 51 second-half points, it wasn’t enough, because Minot continued to score on nearly every one of its possessions in the final 20 minutes.

“We couldn’t get one stop when we needed,” Wilber said, ” let alone two or three together in the second half. It just was really tough.”

Northern sliced the margin down to single digits at 72-63 with 5:49 remaining on a 3-pointer by Josh Book. The Wolves eventually whittled the deficit to 87-79 on another Book three-point field with 41 seconds left but could get no closer. That’s because the Beavers hardly missed on their end of the floor.

“I give our guys credit for fighting and competing,” Wilber said, “but when you’re shooting 70 percent from the two-point field goal, which is an outlandish number, I mean they were 15-of-19 in the second half from the 2’s. We didn’t put any resistance up defensively.”

There was one area of the NSU defense that the Beavers consistently exploited most of the evening.

“When you can’t guard a pick and roll, of course you’ve got to change something up,” said Northern’s Simon Akena. “I felt if we did a better job with that we would have been a lot more comfortable.”

When asked about the challenge of that particular play, Akena responded, “I think they just had a really good player. I feel like we should have done a better job of getting over the screens and staying in front of him.”

Akena did his job on offense, scoring a season-high 24 points to keep the Wolves in it, many coming on low-post moves near the basket.

“What works is just the pump fake,” Akena said. “Everyone knows my pump fake, it just looks like it’s going up there. So, I just kept getting there, getting to my spot, pumping faking, and turning around and laying it in.”

Book finished with 23 points on 5-of-6 shooting from 3-point land, all coming in the final minutes.

“There were a couple of shining lights to this,” Wilber said. “We had 17 offensive rebounds. We still only turned it over seven times.”

However, the Wolves simply did not have enough answers on defense to slow down Minot.

“It’s deflating,” Akena said. “I mean you wanna get stops, right, feel good about yourself, get some stops and we just gotta be better at that, take it personally, and start playing some better defense, all of us.”

Point guard Deuce Benjamin orchestrated the Beavers’ attack, breaking down the NSU defense on the way to 24 points and four assists.

“Deuce Benjamin is a good player and he’s as explosive as you’re going to see,” Wilber said. “He’s averaging 20 points a game, and he’s been getting everybody and he got us tonight.”

The Wolves, 2-6 overall and 2-1 in the NSIC, have two more home games this week, hosting Minnesota-Duluth on Thursday and Bemidji State on Saturday at Wachs Arena.

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

https://nsuwolves.com/sports/mens-basketball/stats/2025-26/minot-state/boxscore/14111