GRAND FORKS, N.D. – Another second half surge from A.J. Plitzuweit wasn't enough as North Dakota earned its first conference series sweep of the season with the 85-81 win inside the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center Sunday afternoon.
 
The Fighting Hawks (8-15, 7-7 Summit) completed the regular season sweep of the Coyotes (11-9, 9-3 Summit) for the first time since joining the Summit League in the 2018-19 season. North Dakota has now won the last four games against USD.
 
With the loss, the Yotes move into a tie for first place with North Dakota State. USD ends the regular season with back-to-back home weekends against Oral Roberts and NDSU. Tip off for Oral Roberts this coming Saturday is set for 3:30 p.m. while Sunday's tip time is set for 2:30 p.m. inside the Sanford Coyote Sports Center.
 
Plitzuweit led the way for the Yotes once again eclipsing the 30-point plateau for the third time this season with 34 points on 11-of-23 shooting from the field. The Vermillion, South Dakota, native scored all but three of his 34 points in the second half. Stanley Umude recorded 15 points while Kanon Koster and Tasos Kamateros notched 10 each. Koster's 10 points is a new career high in a Coyote uniform.

"They shot the ball extremely well once again going 11-of-21 from deep," head coach Todd Lee said. "We got down too much early and had a tough time guarding them. When you are on the road you have to play better defense than that."
 
Leading the way for UND on senior night was the lone senior Bentiu Panoam with 22 points on 6-of-8 from the field. Filip Rebraca (17), Mitchell Sueker (15) and Caleb Nero (13) rounded out the double-figure scoring for the Hawks.
 
The game featured seven lead changes in the first 13 minutes of the game until the Fighting Hawks caught fire from the field once again pushing the lead to as many as 14 in the first half. An Umude jumper in the closing seconds of the first stanza made the score 36-24 in favor of the home team at the intermission.
 
The Coyotes were able to get the lead down to 47-36 with just over four minutes gone in the second half after a Umude jumper. That's as close as the Yotes would get for over 14 minutes of game time as UND pushed its lead to the largest of the game at 63-40 with 11:20 left in the game.
 
Plitzuweit once again refused to go out without a fight recording 31 points in the second half to cut the 23-point deficit down to four points with 44 seconds remaining in the game. But UND would hit some clutch free throws down the stretch to secure the weekend sweep.

"He (Plitzuweit) was able to take advantage of some of the matchups that got switched on him," Lee said of Plitzuweit's performance. "He shot the ball well and was attacking the rim in the second half which is great to see. He did a great job of knocking down shots and getting us back into the game late."
 
The Yotes once again outrebounded the Hawks 40-29, but it was the hot shooting performance from UND that gave them a huge lead for most of the game. UND shot 52.4 percent (11-21) from deep and 47.3 percent (26-55) from the field overall. USD shot well from the field also shooting 49.2 percent (31-63) but struggled from deep only connecting on 9-of-26 for 34.6 percent.
 
The Hawks recorded 28 points from the bench compared to USD's 13.