Bison Sports Update: November 13th

Quite the decent weekend for Bison Athletics!

Football
NDSU Football went to Ohio to visit Youngstown State. NDSU got off to a hot start! While only scoring once in the first quarter, they would score twice to go into halftime leading 21-3. The touchdowns featured 2 running scores, one from Hunter Luepke (49 yard run) and the other from TaMerick Williams (1 yard). The other touchdown was a 71 yard bomb from Cam Miller to Christian Watson. 
Coming out of the half, NDSU ran the ball a lot. TaMerick Williams got his second touchdown of the game on a 50 yard run. After that NDSU scored again in a drive that ended with a passing TD to Noah Gindorff. But Youngstown State wasn't done, and scored two touchdowns in 5 minutes to make it a 2 score game in the early part of the 4th quarter. NDSU is fortunate the Jalen Bussey and TK Marshall scored on 61, and 84 yard runs to seal the win, since they put the backups in right before those YSU TD's. 
Overall, NDSU played very well today. Some questionable play calling and execution in the final 18 minutes is what will be forgotten about this game, unless it comes back to bite them in future weeks. The offense ran wild today which is quite good.
However, the pass defense is starting to worry me heading ever closer to the playoffs.

At the moment NDSU is 5th in the country. Since SDSU lost to a last second touchdown by USD today, the Bison will move up to 4th. Right now NDSU is facing a top 4 seed, which would give them a bye in the first round. However, they don't have homefield advantage guaranteed in the semifinals.

NDSU Football is 6-1 in MVFC play, and 9-1 overall on the year. They come home this week to host high flying 19th ranked South Dakota.

Volleyball
NDSU Volleyball travelled up north to visit the in-state rival UND. The game went quite well for the Bison! They ended up blanking UND, 3 sets to none! That makes this a season sweep over the in state rivals, not allowing a set to the Fighting Hawks. Way to go ladies! 
As we approach the final week of the regular season, the Bison do have a chance to enter the postseason. If they can manage to win both games this week and get lucky with SDSU losing their last game of the year as well, they can sneak into the Summit League tournament. This week NDSU hosts 6th place South Dakota State (Thursday, 7 PM) and league leading South Dakota (Saturday, 11 AM).
NDSU Volleyball is 6-10 in Summit League play and 12-16 overall on the year.

Men's Basketball
NDSU Men's Basketball started off the season 2-0 this week! They opened the season at home against the lowly Concordia-Moorhead Cobbers. They beat them 84-44 off the back of Senior Rocky Kreuser. 
Then they started their west coast trip when visiting Cal Poly. They squeaked out a win, but it was what happened behind the scenes that was everything. Junior Sam Griesel had abdominal surgery over the weekend and is expected to make a full recovery. Given that it was abdominal surgery, Sam will probably return in 4-6 weeks. Get better soon Sam!
The Bison will continue the West Coast trip on Monday when they play UNLV at 9 PM CT and on Tuesday when they play Pac-12 power Arizona at 8 PM CT (PAC-12 Network). 

NDSU Men's Basketball is 2-0 on the year.

Women's Basketball
NDSU Women's Basketball has started their season at 1-1. They secured a win at Horizon League Milwaukee 69-58 to start out 1-0. They finished their Wisconsin trip at Green Bay and lost 54-71. The Bison will come back to Fargo for their home opener this Wednesday against Northern Iowa at 7 PM CT and continuing the homestand on Saturday against Montana at 7 PM CT. Both games will be on ESPN+.

NDSU Women's Basketball is 1-1 on the year.

​Go Bison!