Bison Sports Update: February 27th

Bison athletics overall had a great week.

Men's Basketball
NDSU Men's Basketball finished up their season this week. The Bison hosted St. Thomas and Western Illinois this week, they beat UST on Thursday 73-64. Then on Saturday, NDSU squeaked by Western Illinois, 71-69. They squandered two 16 point lead to beat the Leathernecks with a buzzer-beater shot by Boden Skunberg.

Those wins secured the number 3 seed in the Summit League tournament for the Bison. NDSU will play 6th seeded South Dakota this coming Sunday, March 5th at 8:30 PM CT in the Quarterfinal round of the Summit League tournament. If the Bison beat the Coyotes on Sunday, they would face the winner of the SDSU/KC/Omaha games on Monday at 8:30 PM. The conference title game is set for Tuesday at 8 PM CT again this year. Even though this year includes all 10 teams in the tournament (extra round on Friday), all games until the title game will be available to stream on ESPN+. The championship is also again on ESPN2 on Tuesday.

North Dakota State Men's Basketball finishes the regular season with a 11-7 record in Summit League play, and a 14-16 record overall.

Women's Basketball
NDSU Women's Basketball also had a great last week of the regular season! The Bison hit the final road trip of the season this past week. They visited St. Thomas on Thursday, and beat the Tommies, 64-44. Important to note in that game that Heaven Hamling may have broken her nose after an elbow to the face in the 3rd quarter. She did play the rest of the game, but with a protective mask. On Saturday, the Bison marched into Macomb and beat the Leathernecks, 82-74 with Heaven having a monster game with the face mask on, putting up 31 points.

These wins combined with a UND loss to St. Thomas, clinched the 2 seed for NDSU at the Summit League tournament. This is the Bison women's highest seed achieved in the tournament in program history. It also caps off NDSU's most successful year since at least 2009 when they weren't even eligible for postseason play. The Bison will now await the result of the 7/10 game between Denver and Kansas City on Friday at 3 PM. They will play whoever wins that game on Saturday, March 4th at 3 PM CT. As with the men's tournament happening later in all 5 days in Sioux Falls, the tournament games up until the title game will be broadcast on ESPN+. If the Bison were to win their Quarterfinal matchup, they would play the result of the North Dakota/Omaha game on Monday at 3 PM. The women's championship game is set for 1 PM on Tuesday, March 7th and will be broadcast again this year on ESPNU.

North Dakota State Women's Basketball finishes the regular season with a Summit League record of 12-6 and an overall record of 18-10. 

Softball
NDSU Softball spent their weekend down in Auburn, Alabama for the Plainsman Invitational. Since the update I posted last weekend, weather in Fargo prevented the team from travelling down to Alabama prior to their schedule Friday game against Merrimack, so that was cancelled. The other games were split between Saturday and Sunday. They played Brown and 20th ranked Auburn on both days. They managed to sweep Brown, but got swept by Auburn. NDSU's two wins were highlighted by two shutouts, the first a 6-0 win and the second a 2-0 decision on Sunday. Auburn shut out the Bison in both games they played. The first loss was decided in the 6th inning, and the second was a close game until the final innings in a 4-0 loss. This finishes up February for the Bison, they finish the month with a 6-8 record.

This week, NDSU will travel down to Memphis, Tennessee for the Blues City Classic. They will play Drake and UTSA on Friday, SIU-Edwardsville and tournament host Memphis on Saturday, and then cap the weekend off with UTSA again on Sunday.

North Dakota State Softball is 6-8 on the season.

Baseball
NDSU Baseball had a really rough weekend and end to the month of February. While the team also had travel issues due to the snow storm this past week, the Bison were able to play four games in SoCal. After getting their games against San Diego cancelled, they brought in Hawaii for a game in San Diego. That game was a 13-1 thrashing of NDSU. Later that night, the Bison got beat by San Diego State, 9-2. Then on Monday, the Bison played two games at UC San Diego. They lost both games, neither of them very close. The first was a 7-1 loss, and then the second was a 14-6 blown lead. In that last game the Bison held the lead going into the 8th inning but gave up 11 runs in the 8th to ultimately lose the game. This finishes off a disappointing start of the season for NDSU, going 1-7 in their 8 game February schedule.

NDSU's schedule doesn't get any easier. This week they will head just over the California/Arizona border to play Arizona State on Wednesday in Phoenix. Then on Friday, they will begin a 3 game series with Arizona in Tucson that will go until Sunday. 

North Dakota State Baseball is 1-7 on the season.

​Go Bison!!