Northern Michigan University’s Biggie Luster goes up for a dunk during a college men’s basketball game played against Northland at Vandament Arena in Marquette on Saturday. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)

MARQUETTE — The Northern Michigan University men’s basketball team took care of business on Saturday afternoon, defeating a winless NCAA Division III opponent rather handily at Vandament Arena.

The Wildcats prevailed 83-37 over Northland to improve to 8-2 this season, while the Lumberjacks slid to 0-11.

In their final nonconference game of the regular season, NMU saw all dozen players who dressed get into the scoring column and have at least one rebound. Ten of the 12 also had an assist and even six of them had at least one of the team’s 16 steals as Northern won, among many other battles, the turnover war 20-5.

The 16 steals were the Wildcats’ most in a dozen years, since they made 17 against Finlandia on Nov. 17, 2012.

Northern’s Michael McNabb came off the bench to lead all scorers with 12 points, making 5 of 10 shots from the field and both his free throw attempts. He also shared the game’s top rebounding honors with five to go with three assists and three steals in 28 minutes court time, the most playing time any NMU player had.

Northern starter Dylan Kuehl and reserve Jackson Dudek each scored 10 points, Kuehl making 5 of 7 shots to go with four rebounds, three assists and even a blocked shot in just 21 minutes. Dudek was 4 of 6 from the field, including 2 of 3 on 3-pointers, to also go with four rebounds and three assists.

The Wildcats’ Sam Privet tacked on nine points, Gerald Gittens Jr. eight and Peter Lattos and Biggie Luster seven apiece. Gittens shared top rebounding honors with five and made two steals, while Luster made a whopping six steals, three in the final minute of the first half.

Luster’s game total in steals was the most by an NMU player since Sam Taylor also swiped six on Jan. 10, 2019.

Teammate Aidan Bellisle’s four points and Cooper LePage’s two were their first points of the season, too.

Jahlani Thornton and Ari Pierson each scored eight points for Northland, which made just 30% from the field (16 of 54) and only 1 of 2 free throws.

Comparatively, NMU sank 52% from the field (34 of 66) and 11 of 15 free throws.

The Wildcats raced to 6-0, 11-2 and 20-4 leads in the first 8 1/2 minutes, then took its first 30-point lead at 47-16 with 21 seconds left in the first half on a Luster fastbreak layup.

Scoring the first nine points of the second half to bump the advantage to 56-16, Northern’s advantage never fell below 34 points after that.

Gittens, a transfer this year from the University of Mary who had also played at North Central Missouri, reached 1,000 college points on the Wildcats’ first possession of the day after he made a jump shot.

This wrapped up the schedule for NMU until after the holidays, with Northern getting right back into action at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 2, with a GLIAC road game at Davenport, then another two days later at Grand Valley State.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.