Tommie junior guard Miles Barnstable rises for a basket against Denver freshman guard Sebastian Akins. St. Thomas beat Denver 80-62 in the Summit League Tournament quarterfinals March 6, 2025. (Evan Neubauer/The Crest) 
Tommie sophomore forward Carter Bjerke celebrates a play with his teammates and coaches. Bjerke scored 13 points against Denver. (Evan Neubauer/The Crest) 
Tommie senior guard Ryan Dufault slips past Pioneer redshirt junior guard Ben Bowen. Dufault scored nine points against Denver. (Evan Neubauer/The Crest) 
The St. Thomas men’s basketball team cheer on their teammates as they race toward a win against the Denver Pioneers. (Evan Neubauer/The Crest) 
Tommie junior guard Kendall Blue shoots over Pioneer junior center Isiah Carr. Blue scored 15 points against Denver. (Evan Neubauer/The Crest)
Junior guard Miles Barnstable capped off his 17-point game and a 80-62 win with a finish through contact in the final minutes against Denver Thursday at the Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls.
“We were just staying connected the whole game and just picking each other up when we were down or when we needed to get going on defense, and that’s kind of what really sparks everything for us,” Barnstable said.
St. Thomas will now play the winner between South Dakota State and North Dakota Saturday night, 25 minutes after the 7 p.m. game ends.
The Tommies continued the trend of efficient basketball they’ve displayed throughout the regular season. Graduate guard Drake Dobbs dished eight of the team’s 14 assists while turning the ball over just once.
“You can look at his (assist-to-turnovers), it’s one of the best in the country. His shooting numbers are off the chart … but he’s the unquestioned leader,” coach Johnny Tauer said.
Junior guard Kendall Blue shot a perfect 4-4 in the first half, with three shots coming from beyond the arc. He finished 5-10 with 15 points.
It took over 10 minutes for Tauer’s squad to commit its first turnover, but they made their first three in under three minutes of game time.
They had 11 on the night — a little more than their 9.6 average — but still less than Denver’s 14.
Unlike Denver’s starting five of four first-years and a sophomore, Tauer’s squad skews older. He attributed the team’s success to the leadership of Dobbs, graduate forward Rich Byhre and the veterans he played off the bench.
“When you have grad-student veterans like that who just role model unselfishness and doing their job day after day after day with the goal in mind to win, it makes it easy to have a lot of fun as coaches. These guys, both of them, played tremendous games,” Tauer said.
Byhre led all players with seven rebounds, with two coming off the offensive glass. The Tommies outrebounded Denver and their two seven-footers 31-26, something they’ve only done six times in conference play this season.
“We understand that that’s something that we need to focus on a lot in these games because we’re so undersized a lot of the times,” Barnstable said, “Just being able to stay focused on that and reminding each other, ‘Just box out, hit your guys and make sure you’re staying physical.’”
There were a little more than 5,000 fans in attendance, less than half of the arena’s capacity, and that number was slashed even more at halftime. Most fans were in South Dakota State gear — Brookings is just an hour’s drive away — while very few were Tommie fans and even less were in Denver red.
By the end of the game, there were about 500 fans left in attendance.
The fans that were there in the first half were brought to their feet when sophomore forward Carter Bjerke splashed three-pointers in two straight possessions six minutes into the game. Bjerke finished with 13 points on four of six attempts.
The Tommies nabbed eight steals on defense with first-year guard Nolan Minnesale snatching three of his own. In all, UST scored 22 points off Denver turnovers.
“They didn’t mirror the toughness and the discipline that I would have liked,” Denver coach Shammond Williams said.
Only two Pioneers seemed to have found their way through the Tommie defense at times. First-year forward Josh Pickett dropped 14 points, and sophomore guard DeAndre Craig had 15.
Williams was thrust into the conference tournament with just two games played under his new interim title after coach Jeff Wulbrun was placed on leave Feb. 21.
“If you look at the statistics from six weeks ago, (Denver) has been one of the top teams in the Summit League the last ten or so games; their defense has gotten so much better, and so we knew it was going to be a battle,” Tauer said.
The Tommies will now play in the semifinals, where they’ve reached the past two seasons but have come up short both times.
“We’re going to do whatever it takes to win each game each night, and we’re not going to take each game for granted,” Blue said.
Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.
The Crest student media’s coverage of the Summit League tournament is sponsored by U.S. Bank. The Crest is the independent student-run media at the University of St. Thomas.
