DENVER, Colo. – After making the short trip to downtown Denver for the third leg of their four-game road trip before the break, the Colorado School of Mines men's basketball team looked to extend their winning streak to four games Wednesday night at the Auraria Event Center against MSU Denver. The Orediggers (8-3, 4-1) scored first and never trailed for the duration of the game, downing the Roadrunners (8-3, 2-3) by a final score of 78-67.
 
Cade Mankle picked up Wednesday right where he left off Saturday, draining a three for the first basket of the game before assisting on a trey from Majok Deng the next trip down the floor and hitting a mid-range jumper on the fourth Mines possession of the game to make it 10-4. The three-ball was working early for Mines as Riley Schroeder's trey made it a 10-point lead for the first time at 18-8 with 14:39 in the opening half.
 
A 7-0 run by MSU Denver over the next minute and a half cut the lead back to three, but Schroeder stopped it cold with another trey to make it 21-15 at the 12:30 mark before Adam Krasovec arrived to the three party with one of his own to extend the lead to nine. Two free throws from Reagan Koch pushed the advantage back to 10 with 9:21 left while two more free throws from Deng at 6:56 game the Orediggers their biggest lead of the half at 32-20.
 
Mines managed to keep MSUD at arms reach until the final minute of the half, as the home team closed the period on a 5-0 run and taking advantage of several turnovers to make it a three-point game going to the break at 45-42.
 
As play resumed in the second half, Mankle again opened the scoring with a driving layup from Krasovec and another jumper from Deng to quickly push the advantage back to seven. Back-to-back treys from Deng and Krasovec sandwiched around a KJ Garrett jumped made it 55-44 before Alex Romack laid one up to make it a 13-point game.
 
Four-straight from Krasovec around the 10-minute mark gave Mines their largest lead of the night of 18 at 68-50 following a put back layup off a miss by Markus Pastorcic-Straun. For the remainder of the night, the lead never fell below 11 points as the Orediggers slowly drained the energy from the home crowd. Sam Beskind got going in the scoring column late while Mankle and Deng kept pouring it in and though the Roadrunners scored seven of the final nine points of the night, the clock was against them as the blue and gray continued their winning ways with a 78-67 victory.
 
NOTABLES
-Deng rebounded from a tough weekend in South Dakota to go for 23 points on 7-15 shooting including 3-6 from deep and turning in another perfect 6-6 night from the stripe
-Mankle followed up his career-night Saturday with 13 points on 6-11 shotting with six assists and four rebounds
-Krasovec started and posted his best outing of the season, scoring 10 points on 3-6 shooting, going 2-4 from beyond the arc with six rebounds
-Schroeder came off the bench to go for 11 points on 4-6 shooting, highlighted by a 3-5 day from deep with five rebounds and two assists
-Romack stuffed the stat sheet with six points, seven rebounds, two blocks, two steals and an assist while also adding a posterizing two-handed slam in the first half
-Beskind also added six assists while scoring six with four rebounds
-Koch added six off the bench along with two steals
-The Orediggers shot 54% (27-50) from the floor in the game, 50% (9-18) from deep and 83.3% (15-18) from the free throw line in the game with 37 rebounds, seven steals and two blocks while holding the Roadrunners to 40.3% (25-62) shooting overall and 15.8% (3-19) from three
 
UP NEXT
The Orediggers have one more game on deck before the Christmas break when they head to Gunnison Saturday afternoon to take on Western Colorado at 3 p.m.

Fans can keep up with Mines men's basketball on X and Instagram at @minesmbb. They can also keep up with Colorado School of Mines Athletics all year long on Facebook, X and Instagram using the handle @MinesAthletics.