The Simpson Storm held off a frantic fourth quarter comeback attempt by the Golden Gusties of Gustavus Adolphus in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Friday evening, winning 73-67 in a game heard live on 94.3 KNIA.

The Storm led from start to finish, getting off to a quick start but were unable to pull away throughout the first half, leading 16-8 after the first and taking a 30-18 lead at the halftime break. The Storm seemingly put the game away in the third, building a 17 point advantage going into the final 10 minutes, and building a lead as high as 20 in the fourth, but Gustavus would not go quietly as they exploded offensively scoring 32 4th quarter points and got the lead down to four before they ran out of time and the Storm hit clutch free throws.

Head coach Brian Niemuth tells KNIA Sports the late surge by Gustavus is what you can expect to see in the NCAA Tournament, and he felt his team didn’t lose sight of what they needed to accomplish late.

“They’ve been through this before, we have a lot of experience. I just think that our tough non-conference schedule this year prepared us for games like this. We’ve been in games like this, we lost the one game to Eau Claire in a game like this, and we’ve won several others that were tight like this. I told them after the game, this is the NCAA Tournament, survive and advance. Teams will go on runs, you aren’t going to play a bad team, and you just have to keep battling, and I thought they did a good job of that tonight.”

The Storm advance to the Round of 32, and host Wisconsin-Oshkosh who upset #18 Wisconsin-Lutheran in the first round. The game can be heard live on 94.3 KNIA with Andrew Swadner and Rick Wilson on the play-by-play, with pregame coverage beginning at 4:45 and tip-off scheduled for 5pm.