Bison Sports Update: October 3

Lots of cool Bison Sports news to unpack, lets get started!

Football
NDSU Football took a trip up north to visit our in-state rival North Dakota on Saturday. Quite the nailbiter of a game it was! This year, just like last year, UND is no slouch of a team and fits in quite nicely in the Missouri Valley. NDSU scored first on a field goal. UND responded with a touchdown. After that NDSU eventually kicked another field goal before halftime to bring them within 1. 
After halftime NDSU eventually broke through and kicked a game leading field goal. After many punts by both teams the Bison finally broke the ice on the endzone and Quincy Patterson ran in for the first TD of the day for the green and gold! NDSU now had a  2 score lead in a very close game! UND drove down and kicked a field goal to bring it back to a one score game. Their onside kick failed, and NDSU kneeled it away to win the conference opener! 
I gotta say, this was probably the best MVFC game so far this year. Overall it was a defensive game, but under the surface NDSU's offense really struggled. The offensive line was suspect, which could very well have been UND's defensive front was just that good. But we haven't seen the line play this bad in a long time. UND limited the country's best rushing attack to 223 total yards. Most of those yards showed up in the second half of the game when Hunter Luepke and Dom Gonnella had huge gains that set up NDSU's field goal and touchdown drives. The passing game had the worst game of the year so far and didn't pass 57 yards. 
NDSU also had a hard time on 3rd downs. They were 3 for 13 on 3rd down on Sunday (23%), by far the worst performance of the year. Between the passing attack and 3rd down conversions, these will be the key things to clean up if NDSU wants to win a Missouri Valley title and make a deep playoff run this year. The Bison could probably walk into UNI and other Valley teams they will play this year and be able to do this to an extent, but they will not be able to topple SDSU if they play like this in Brookings. 
As bad as it sounds though, this offense showed why it is vastly different from the Spring version. This offense is so much better in the clutch. I don't know if last year's offense pulls a win today, but this year's does! The offense played the last drive like it was any of our conference games, it was as if a switch had been flipped and they knew they needed to win. Play calling was on point and the offensive line played like the UND rush was not a problem. They really do need to involve our top wide receivers in the future though. We have two top 50 wideouts in the nation on the team and they need to be utilized.
North Dakota State Football moves to 1-0 in MVFC play and 4-0 overall on the year. Next Saturday they come home to the Fargodome for the NDSU homecoming game against Northern Iowa. UNI at the moment is ranked 15th in the nation, but may move up after their win against Youngstown State on Saturday.

Volleyball
NDSU Volleyball had a good week of conference play! The Bison started out the week in Vermillion playing South Dakota. They lost 3 sets to none. They shrugged this off when they visited Macomb and took down Western Illinois in 5 sets! They then finished the road trip in St. Paul when they blanked Summit League newcomer St. Thomas in 3 sets.
North Dakota State Volleyball is now 2-3 in Summit League play and 8-9 overall on the year. Next week they will come home to host Denver on Thursday at 7 PM and Omaha on Saturday at 11 AM for Homecoming.

Soccer
​NDSU Soccer played 2 matches this week. On Thursday the Bison played their conference opener against Oral Roberts and won 3-2! They claimed victory after a killer first half in which they scored 3 goals. On Saturday, the hosted Kansas City and lost 1-0.
North Dakota State Women's Soccer is now 1-1 in Summit League play and 1-7-1 overall on the year. They will now take most of the week off before they host in state rival North Dakota on Sunday, October 10th as part of Homecoming weekend.

Lots of reasons to be excited this year! 
​Go Bison!