BEMIDJI -- More often than not, the Bemidji State men’s basketball team is in good hands when Dalton Albrecht has the ball in his.
“He’s just got a really good knack around the hoop,” BSU head coach Mike Boschee said. “He just finds a way to manipulate his body and get in position to create a good look for himself. He does have soft hands around the hoop. Other players are able to get him the ball in those situations, and he finishes really well.”
Albrecht has been a consistent threat at the rim for the Beavers, to the tune of a 64.7 field goal percentage from the field. That number ranks 10th in Division II and would stand as a Bemidji State single-season program record.
“Teammates put me in good spots to make easy shots, and then I’m just making the shots too,” the sophomore forward said. “In practice, shoot game-like shots. It’s nothing different between practice and shooting them in the game, really.”
Albrecht has made 66 of his 102 field goal attempts this season, good for a scoring average of 8.1 points per game.
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But more than those numbers, BSU prioritized the number seven -- the length of the losing streak the Beavers finally snapped on Friday. Boschee skipped right over calling it a monkey on the team’s back and opted for a heavier metaphor.
“I think the term to use is ‘elephant’ off the back,” Boschee said. “It’s one of those things where you don’t want to go through them, but we did. It was certainly nice to play a good, complete basketball game. … We made shots, we defended really well. And that’s all good stuff.”
Bemidji State needs a whole lot more of that with four games left in the regular season.
BSU (4-13 NSIC) is in eighth place in the NSIC North Division standings. St. Cloud State (5-10 NSIC) currently holds the sixth and final playoff spot, while seventh-place Minnesota Crookston (5-12 NSIC) is also sandwiched in between.
The Beavers are two games back of SCSU but would hold a tiebreaker by percentage points if they finished tied. Bemidji State also holds a tiebreaker over UMC if those two were to tie, but potential three-way tiebreakers would only come into focus after St. Cloud State plays BSU and UMC head-to-head next weekend.
“There are a lot of things out of our control, but we’ve just got to get back to trying to play as well as we possibly can,” Boschee said. “Our big guys need to finish really well inside, and our perimeter guys need to shoot the ball well from outside. And then try to stay as consistent as we can defensively.”
First thing’s first, though, and the Beavers have two important road games if they want to keep their postseason hopes alive. They play at Northern State at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11, and at Minnesota State Moorhead at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 12.
“(Our mindset) is just the same as always: keep grinding, go to practice every day, work hard going into the next game,” Albrecht said. “It’s going to take a lot of grit. Obviously we’ve got to work really hard.”
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Thompson closing in on rebounds record
Senior forward Derek Thompson is within striking distance of a 44-year-old record.
Thompson has racked up 685 rebounds in his career, which is nine shy of Steve Vogel’s Bemidji State program record of 694.
Vogel grabbed his final board for BSU in 1978, and this weekend Thompson can be the first to surpass it. The Beavers have four games left in the regular season for Thompson to set the new standard as high as he can.
