Feb. 21—GRAND FORKS — St. Thomas sophomore guard Laura Hauge hit a 3-pointer, turned to the bench with a wide grin and pointed a finger at her celebrating teammates.
It was her second triple of the fourth quarter, and the Tommies' third in less than three minutes.
UND head coach Dennis Hutter called a timeout.
"Clip that!" yelled graduate guard Jada Hood as St. Thomas gathered courtside.
The Fighting Hawks had weathered storms early in the second and third quarters. They entered the fourth trailing by five.
The flurry of 3-pointers, though, gave St. Thomas an 12-point lead, which proved too much to overcome.
The Tommies (14-14, 7-7) kept the Hawks at bay down the stretch for a 70-58 win Saturday afternoon at the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center.
"I think we had a little bit of miscommunication, in conversion especially," sophomore guard Sydney Piekny said. "Getting ball side and getting to those shooters. But that's the way the game goes. We've got to adjust to that and we've got to get there faster. That really turned out to be the swing at the end of the game that pushed them away."
UND shot 4-for-5 from beyond the arc in the first quarter to overcome a 9-0 start by St. Thomas and carry a 16-14 lead into the second.
However, the Hawks made just one triple through the next two quarters. They shot 7-for-21 from 3-point range overall.
"They really just started trailing us out," Piekny said. "Hard switches, just trying to make it difficult for us to even get the ball. And we've got to adjust to that, we've got to find other ways to score, whether that's back cutting, changing our pace."
The Tommies shot 18-for-29 inside the arc to UND's 12-for-23. Sophomore Mikayla Werner scored 17 points without a single 3-pointer, shooting 7-for-9 from the field.
Senior guard Faith Feuerbach led St. Thomas by shooting 8-for-13 for 21 points.
The Tommies negated senior center Walker Demers' interior presence. Consistently hounded by double teams, she finished with five turnovers and shot 1-for-3 for two points.
"They made life tough for her," Hutter said. "They were doing a lot of things to take her away. Some teams have fronted her to make her life tough. Tonight, they doubled her and stunted her a little bit."
Graduate guard Mackenzie Hughes scored 19 points and was the only Hawk who scored in double figures.
When the Tommies opened the second quarter with a 9-2 run and eventually stretched their lead to nine, Hughes put in a layup and hit two free throws in the final two minutes for a more manageable deficit.
"She's the most fun player to watch," Piekny said. "I spot up in the corner and I just get a firsthand view of her drive going downhill. She's a pretty special player."
UND faced another weighty deficit near the end of the third quarter.
St. Thomas stretched its advantage to 10 points, though a triple from Piekny and a couple of free throws from graduate forward Hanna Miller in the final two minutes sliced the lead in half.
"We had to weather it again, because we didn't come out of the gate in the third quarter very well again," Hutter said. "We get down early, and we're always playing from behind. That's just something that we're struggling with is we're down (9-0 in the first quarter) before I had to call that timeout. It just takes twice as much effort, in my opinion, to come back as it does to hold and maintain a lead. ... It'd be nice if we could get off to a fast start once in a while here and get up 8-0, 8-2, 10-4 or something like that, where we don't have to withstand that kind of energy."
UND fell to 7-21 overall and 3-11 in Summit League play. The Hawks host South Dakota for Senior Night on Wednesday before closing out the regular season at North Dakota State on Saturday.