After being on the road the last two weekends, the Chadron State College basketball teams will be at home Saturday, Feb. 3 to meet South Dakota Mines in an RMAC double-header. The women’s game will tip off the action at 1 o’clock in the Chicoine Center.
The teams’ records would indicate that they’ll be pretty well matched.
The CSC women are 5-12 overall and 3-10 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, while the Lady Hardrockers are 5-13 and 5-7. The CSC men are 10-9 for the season and 7-6 in league play. The Mines men are 8-10 and 6-6.
The Mines women have a signature win. In early January, they shot 45% from 3-point range while defeating Adams State 67-62 in Rapid City. The Lady Grizzlies were ranked 22nd in the nation at the time.
Mines standout Piper Bauer played all 40 minutes and scored 30 points while hitting six of 13 3-pointers. In addition, Morning Grace Spotted Bear, a 6-foot freshman, had 13 points and 13 rebounds against the Grizzlies.
Bauer is averaging 17.2 points a game, sixth best in the RMAC, and has made 60 of 146 shots from behind the arc. She scored 22 and 20 points against the Eagles last year.
The men’s game will feature some of the leading scorers in the RMAC. Overall, Matt Ragsdale of Black Hills State is the conference leader at 20.5 points a game, but the Hardrockers’ 6-4 Cameron Cohn is second with a 19-point average, followed by Chadron State’s Bryce Latimer, who is third at 18.8, and Mines’ Alejandro Rama, fourth at 18.0.
Last Feb. 21, when the Hardrockers visited the Chicoine Center, Latimer tallied 43 points while making 13 of 17 field goal shots, four of them treys, and 13 of 14 free throws.
Both Cohn and Rama are 3-point marksmen. Rama has sunk 47 shots from downtown and Cohn has made 42. Another of the Hardrockers, Keagan Smith, has nailed 35 and his 43.8 percentage on triples is the team’s best. Overall, Mines has made treys and the foes 124.
Chadron State’s Dalton Peterson leads the RMAC in 3-pointers with 55. He’s pulled the trigger from long range 133 times for 41.4%.
The Eagles will be back on the road next week. They will play at Colorado Christian in Lakewood on Wednesday night and visit Western Colorado in Gunnison on Friday night.
Both of the Christian teams have a high scorer. The Cougars’ Maggie Hutka leads the RMAC women with a 19.4 per game average, although she scored just eight points when her team visited CSC on Dec. 12.
Later that night, 6-foot guard Noah Kon tallied 32 points in the men’s game. He’s averaging 15.5 for the season.