Nightmares Avoided: Summit Tournament First Round Recap, NDSU vs. Denver

Phew. Another gritty win for the Bison. They knocked off the Denver Pioneers tonight 61 to 50. A double digit victory that looked anything like a blowout after the first half. You could tell right away with that first half, that this was going to be anything but easy for the Bison. Jacobson had a good half, scoring 9 and adding 4 rebounds and an assist. And LA had a solid performance with 6 points and 3 rebounds. But as a team the Bison never managed to find their rhythm offensively for the entire first half. Luckily for them the Pioneers never really did either, but despite several flashes of promise for NDSU the half still ended miserably with the Bison down by 4, 27-23.

The second half didn’t start out all too peachy and bright for the Bison either as Denver opened the half by adding to their lead, pushing it to 6 at 29-23. However, the Pioneers then promptly went cold, doing scoreless for a 6 minute stretch while the Bison went on a 13-0 run and took a 36-29 lead. Again, this came largely on the backs of Alexander and Jacobson, the teams present and future offensive all stars respectively. Its great to see Jacobson stepping up in this late season and developing some consistency, because when we lose LA next season, we’re going to need Jacobson to pick up the Lion’s share of LA’s production if we want to have any hope of being competitive again.

And Jacobson was REALLY feeling it in this one. 14 points in the second half alone, and 23 in the game (a new career high). Jacobson has really stepped up of late and the Bison certainly needed it tonight. If Alexander and Jacobson can both keep this up through the Summit League Tournament (and beyond?) NDSU could make themselves a real nightmare match-up for opponents. It was one thing when teams could key on Alexander all year long throughout the regular season and hope to grind NDSU’s offense to a halt, but if Jacobson is going to put up anything close to these numbers at a consistent rate, opponents won’t be able to key on either of our key offensive threats without leaving themselves mortally open to the other.

Things weren’t all peachy offensively in the second half though. Missed free throws continued to be a problem. Especially frustrating in that it was guys like LA missing free throws, and as a team the Bison were 24 for 40 from the charity stripe… 60%… not exactly what you’d hope for in Tournament time. Moreover, the Bison found their old nemesis foul trouble returning as LA picked up his 4th foul with 8 minutes left in the game while Brown and Kading both already had 3. That meant the Bison had to leave both Alexander (the Summit League Player of the Year) and Brown (NDSU’s best defender) on the bench in crunch time. Not exactly what Summit League Coach of the Year Dave Richman would ask for. However, Jacobson continued to come up huge and carry this team on a career night for him, Paul Miller started to heat up late, and Big Dex came up with some important rebounds, clutch free throws, and one nasty block to help keep the Bison afloat while their star rode the pine.

By the time LA finally got back in, however, he was able to hit a couple clutch free throws to push the Bison lead to 11, and Chris Kading came up with back to back blocks in the closing 2 minutes to ensure that even though both Kading and Alexander had fouled out, the game was too far out of reach for the Pioneers to end the Bison’s season tonight. So hey, rough start but a beautiful ending right? NDSU absolutely crushed Denver in the paint scoring 34 of their 61 points in the paint compared to only 24 points for the Pioneers. Denver essentially plays 4 guards, and Coach Richman wisely decided to abuse them inside as a result. It worked. The Bison got the win. The season stays alive, and the NDSU’s dream of a second consecutive NCAA Tournament could still become a reality. If it does, however, it will likely mean going through Oral Roberts, which I for one am dreading.

Of course there is a possibility that Marcellus Barksdale could play out of his mind and lead the IUPUI Jaguars to an upset victory over Scott Sutton’s crew, but… I mean… let’s not be silly

 

In all liklihood we’ll play Oral Roberts this Monday night, and while the Golden Eagles are certainly  a very talented team (they proved as much with that 16 point beat-down of the Bison) NDSU is better. If this same Bison basketball team that played tonight and ferouciously dominated the paint shows up again Monday night, ORU won’t stand a chance of beating us without another 34 point game from Obi Emegano. This will not be an easy game, but its one the Bison should win. And I certainly hope they do. The only way this season could get any sweeter is if we could avenge both the ORU loss and the SDSU loss in a 2 day span, all while punching our ticket to the Big Dance. So let’s start dreaming folks!

The Real Test Begins: Regular Season Recap and Summit League Tournament Preview

(Photo Credit: Dave Wallis, The Dickinson Press)

Sorry for the long hiatus folks. I was temporarily indisposed… aka binge watching college basketball from other conference… HOWEVER I’m back at long last to recap the Bison’s excellent regular season and preview the upcoming Summit League Tournament where we’ll find out if the Bison can make a second consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament.

Photo Credit: Colin Mulvaney, The Spokesman-Review

First things first. South Dakota managed to pull off the upset like we suspected they would against SDSU in the final game of the season, ensuring that even after a brutal beatdown for the Bison at Oral Roberts, NDSU still grabbed a share of the Summit League Regular season title this year. This accomplishment is both impressive and deserved. This Bison team appeared to be in full rebuild mode after losing so many key contributors from last year’s team. However, Dave Richman, in his first year as a head coach and Lawrence Alexander (in his final season of college basketball managed to pull the Bison together, and push them to a share in the regular season. Had that Oral Roberts loss cost the Bison the lead in the Summit it would have been incredibly unjust. After the year these guys have had it would have felt incredibly unfair for them to come so close and yet fall just short. So thankfully the Coyotes bailed us out. I would have never thought at the beginning of the season that this Bison team would be able to win a share of the Summit League Title, but after seeing how far they came and how fast they developed it only seems right that they ended the regular season atop the standings alongside SDSU.

However, there can’t be two 1 seeds in the Summit League Tournament. So even though the Bison technically tied the Jackrabbits this season, we had to go to the dreaded tiebreakers. The Bison tied the Jackrabbits in the first two tiebreakers (head to head win % and wins vs. ranked opponents [both teams had 0]) but in RPI ranking the Jackrabbits edged out the Bison, meaning we slipped to the #2 seed. Now, this wouldn’t have been such a bad thing except that IUPUI and Denver finished the season with the same conference record (6-10). Moreover, Denver got swept this season by IUPUI this season. This means that even though IUPUI (10-20 overall) is certainly the 2nd worst team in the Summit (and the team NDSU should play in the first round) and Denver is the 3rd worst team (12-17 overall), NDSU has to play Denver in the opening round because IUPUI has the edge in head to head winning percentage (100%). Yaaaaaay. Congrats on your 2 seed guys!

 

Now, again… both IUPUI and Denver sucked this year. So that shouldn’t be such a tough game right? Right. Until you remember that Denver took the Bison to overtime in both our regular season meetings. Denver is a horrible matchup for NDSU. They’re a tough matchup for anyone in the Summit because of their unique style of play as we’ve discussed ad nauseum here. Moreover, its incredibly difficult to sweep a team in the regular season, and even more difficult to beat them three straight times in a season. Especially when they’re a team as well coached as Denver. Add to that the fact that NDSU ended Denver’s season last year as well when they beat them in the Summit League Tournament and the matchup becomes all the more intimidating from a revenge perspective.

NDSU has obviously owned Denver since they joined the Summit League last season, but this year’s 2 wins were anything but easy. I just hope Coach Richman and LA have the rest of the guys ready for the hot spotlight of postseason play, because this is where one game means everything.

But let’s assume the Bison get through Denver. Then we have a rematch against an Oral Roberts team (that just so happens to get to play IUPUI in the first round… which is totally fair… I’m not bitter or anything…) that is soaring with confidence after blasting NDSU to close out the regular season. Its not just that they’re confident because they’er playing well. They’ve confident against us specifically because they just housed us. Now, that game was at home as opposed to a neutral site like this next one, but I’m just hoping Richman gets the guys fired up for revenge and we absolutely annihilate them this time. Then would come the real test, a rematch with SDSU.

[Photo Credit: Joe Ahlquist, Argus Leader]

SDSU had a horrendous start to the Summit League Season, but since then has clearly recovered and proven to the rest of the league that they are clearly the best team in the Summit. They’re better than NDSU. No buts about it. However, the Bison have beaten them once before this year. Yes that game was in Fargo and this game will be played in South Dakota, but I have full faith that, if the Bison are lucky enough to make it to the Finals, the Bison Nation will show up and make that anything but a road environment. That game would be the most important one of the season for the Bison, but all the pressure would be on the Jackrabbits, and I would hope that would help the Bison play loose and confident.

However, we’d still have to make it that far. Denver scares the piss out of me, and obviously I’m dreading a rematch with Oral Roberts if thats what comes. Nothing will be easy to end the season here when the stakes are so high. The Summit will likely never put 2 teams into the NCAA Tournament so the Summit League Tournament is always going to mean more than the entire regular season. For now though let’s just take things one step at a time. Here’s hoping for a 3rd win over Denver on the season. Good luck guys and go Bison!

Gut-Wrenching Wins and Pyrrhic Victories: NDSU @ Denver Recap

Image via giphy

GAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! You gotta stop doing this to me guys!!! My poor little heart can’t take it!!! The Bison won in overtime 73-69 at Denver tonight, in a game that ended far closer than it was played all game long.

The Bison controlled the game all night long, and looked much more experienced and prepared than they did in their last meeting with the Pioneers. The Bison pushed out to an early lead and had an 8-10 point cushion for nearly the entire game. Until around 5 minutes remaining. Then all hell broke loose. Denver started raining threes out of nowhere, and tied the game at 60-60 for the first tie since 0-0. However, LA hit a 3 to put the Bison up by 3. Beautiful. Game over, right? None of this wimpy driving for a bucket, we just make it rain from deep and beat you on your home floor. And then Denver’s Brett Olson hit a half court shot (!!!!!) to tie the game and send us to overtime…

In the end, however, who else but Lawrence Alexander put things away as he scored 8 of the Bison’s 10 points in overtime as NDSU came out with a hard fought 4 point win.

LA was truly spectacular yet again as he scored 28 in spite of the fact that the officials weren’t given him any help or bail outs for the heavy handed defense Denver threw at him in the lane. The guy is truly amazing and has put this young, inexperienced team on his back all season long, and somehow has forced them up to a 1 game lead in the Summit with 4 games to play. His performance tonight was particularly impressive as the Bison lost Kory Brown early to a left leg injury (after playing 3 minutes).

Kory went airborne and made some knee to knee contact which knocked him out for the rest of the game. After the game no one seemed to know how serious the injury was, but it can’t be a good thing since Brown has been nursing a knee injury all season long already anyway. The Bison have SDSU on Saturday, and if Brown doesn’t play I have a hard time believing the Bison have enough ammunition to handle everything SDSU can throw at you, but if LA is going to continue to be lights out like this anything is possible.

And it wasn’t just LA out there tonight. With Kory out, AJ Jacobson stepped up big time tonight with a career high 19 points, 5 boards, and 3 assists. Near the end of the game Denver exposed his defense some what as the turned him over and scored several much needed points on him to send the game into overtime, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Bison wouldn’t have been in this game at all if it weren’t for AJ’s big night. Clearly tonight showed yet another glimpse of his incredibly bright future.

Image via NDSU Men’s Basketball Twitter https://twitter.com/NDSUmbb

Also, losing Kory meant the Bison had to turn to someone as they couldn’t go to a 6 man rotation for the entire game. That man was of course true freshman walk on Brian Ishola who impressed me mightily  with his play. He had a career high 4 rebounds, hit a jump and a free throw for 3 points and showed that he has truly been making some great all around growth all season long. He’s obviously not quite up to the level of a D1 basketball player just yet, but all the work ethic and determination are obviously there. Rebounds are a toughness stat, and those 4 rebounds tell me this guy is going to work hard and grind out a future for himself with this team, and I couldn’t be happier to watch him to do it.

Image via Brian Ishola’s Twitter https://twitter.com/realish34

We also had a resurgence of the big men as Chris Kading game up with 2 big blocks, and we had a return of Big Dex! Dex finished the game with 10 points, 5 rebounds, and a steal while Kading added 6 points 3 rebounds and 2 blocks. This team won’t get very far if we don’t get production from the big men so it was great to see the two of them have a little bit of a wakeup game.

Image via NDSU Men’s Basketball Twitter https://twitter.com/NDSUmbb/status/562654139524857856

All in all I’m really pleased with what I saw from the Bison tonight. I loved to see the continued development of a guy like Ishola. I loved to see the team step up even after losing a key component of the team in Kory. Loved to see LA continue his absolutely absurd ways, and it was great for AJ to give us another glimpse into Bison Basketball’s future. NDSU played a great, dominating game for almost the entire game against a tough opponent in a tough road environment. And even when they gave away their cushion they never gave up and toughed out a difficult win in difficult circumstances. This team continues to surprise me with just how gritty and determined they are. They’ll need that toughness come Saturday when they try to defend their 1 game lead in the conference against South Dakota State, possibly without their best defensive player. I have faith they can do it, but it certainly won’t be easy. Luckily the Bison just finished showing me that they won’t back down just because a challenge isn’t easy.

Time to Climb Mountains, Might as Well Start in the Rockies: NDSU @ Denver Preview

The Bison Men’s basketball team is back in action tomorrow night, but this time on the road. This Thursday night NDSU travels to Denver, Colorado to take on the Denver Pioneers basketball team. Now, this game is incredibly important, and honestly winnable for the Bison, but it will by no means be easy. First let’s start out with why this game is so important.

The Bison are currently sitting in first place in the Summit League, but their position is anything but secure. They’re sitting at 9-2, but South Dakota State is hot on their heels at 9-3. The Bison have only a half game lead in the conference which could evaporate in an instant. NDSU can’t afford a single slip up, no matter how justified, as they close out the last 5 games of the season.

That being said, I’ll be incredibly impressed if they manage to pull this thing off. Of their three remaining games the Bison play all three of the other top 4 teams in the Summit (SDSU, IPFW, and Oral Roberts) and play two of those 3 (SDSU and ORU) on the road. NDSU has been incredibly impressive all season long in Fargo, but their road record is less than stellar. Add into that the fact that this is top notch competition on the road, and you have a whole new mess to worry about.

But it doesn’t end there. Their next game is also a road game against the Denver Pioneers. Now, Denver has undeniably struggled this year. This is a rebuilding year for them. However, they have 2 massive Aces in the Hole so to speak when it comes to playing the Bison tomorrow night; Their style of play, and their home arena.

(Image via denverpioneers.com http://www.denverpioneers.com/facilities/magness-arena.html )

 

Denver is 4-1 at home in the Summit so far this season including wins over SDSU and ORU. So not only does NDSU struggle on the road, but Denver has proven that they are a MUCH better team at home than they are on the road (they have yet to win a road game in the Summit this season). But the more important advantage for them is their style of play. Denver run’s the Princeton Offense and the Matchup Zone defense. Both notorious for confusing young, inexperienced teams (like the Bison this year). Now, NDSU has its fair share of veterans, but the bulk of this team is new when compared to last year’s senior laden team. Moreover, this very same NDSU team struggled mightily against Denver when they played in Fargo January 29th, less than 2 weeks ago.

The first half was an absolute decimation by Denver as the Bison were held to just 16 (!!!) points. Luckily for the Bison, however, Denver (in large part because of their own youth and inexperience) managed only 26 points. So luckily enough the Bison only found themselves down 10 at half time in their home arena to a rebuilding program (if you can call that lucky I guess…). However, the Bison stormed back in the second half, scoring 31 points to Denver’s 21 to force overtime where they rolled over the Pioneers, finally winning the game 61 – 54. I bring all that up, however, to point out that Denver very well could have beaten the Bison on our own home court, so there is no telling how tough they will be to beat when the game is in Denver.

Hopefully having 1 game’s worth of experience against Denver’s unique style of play and 1 half’s worth of dominating it will do the Bison well here. Hopefully it makes it much easier for them to adjust, see what is happening around them, avoid confusion, and refuse to give up any easy points or easy stops to the Pioneers. However, I do have the lurking fear that that first half will rear its ugly head again. Moreover, without the safe confines of Scheels Arena surrounding them, and a home crowd to pick them up, I worry that if the Bison hit a rough patch they may not be able to pick themselves back up and stage a comeback the way they did when these teams last met.

Image via Inertia Sports Media and http://milehighmids.tumblr.com/post/79239754283/it-ends-again-with-an-awful-loss

In the end this is yet another must win game for the Bison. Yes it will be tough. Yes it is very possible that Denver wins this game. No I would not be surprised if the Bison won, and no I would not have expected them to win this game at the start of this season. However, the Bison right now are far and away a different and better team than I ever could have imagined they would be this early in the Dave Richman Era. Brand new Coach in his first ever season as a head coach, three new starters, and only 4 guys even returning from the roster that won NDSU’s first ever NCAA Tournament game last season (and one of those four guys, Carlin Dupree, didn’t even play 200 total minutes that season). This was not a team that was supposed to be winning this year. It was not a team that was supposed to be in 1st place in the Summit League with 5 games left in the regular season. But they are. And we as fans couldn’t be happier about it. However, now that this plucky bunch of upstarts (led by one dominant star) have managed to get this far, I can’t help but feel that it would be an incredibly disappointment to not finish this thing off with a regular season title. I will by no means be disappointed by their performance or end results this year. They’ve already far exceeded what I expected. However, you only get so many chances to win your League, and I would hate to see the Bison miss out on a chance to continue the winning ways they started last year, and build an early foundation of success for this new corps of soon to be stars and winners. So let’s go steal a road game, shall we? Because I think we all know how we really  want this season to end, yes? Yes.

Grinding out Another Win: NDSU – Denver Recap, and NDSU @ Western Illinois Preview

Oofda… that was somethin’. The Bison somehow pulled out a miraculous win at home after getting their heads absolutely beaten in in the first half. NDSU was held to 16 (!) points in the first half, and looked absolutely bewildered by Denver’s Matchup Zone Defense. They simply couldn’t do ANYTHING and looked every bit as young as they are. This was particularly surprising to me considering how much better they looked even in a loss to IPFW, and previously in their overtime win over IUPUI on the road. But in the end we knew Denver’s unique style of play would cause problems for the young Bison and hooooly crap was it worse than I even imagined in that first half.

HOWEVER, luckily for the Bison, Basketball games are played in two halves, and the second was a completely different story. Lawrence Alexander had only 3 points at halftime, but ended the game with 21. Kory Brown had been held to 0 points and 3 rebounds in the first half. By the end of the game he’d scored 11 points and grabbed a career high 13 rebounds. Moreover, LA credited Brown with jump-starting the team, claiming that it was Brown’s energy that kept the Bison alive and kicked them back into gear when they began their comeback. That is exactly what we need from Brown on this team and its great to see him embracing his role, and other players responding to him.

(image via NDSU Men’s Basketball Twitter https://twitter.com/NDSUmbb/status/552211481001861121/photo/1 )

Even with those great performances, however, the game was a battle. LA and Coach Richman both credited their comeback to simplifying the offense, getting back to their basic cutters, and getting LA open at the top of the key. That sounds about right to me. The team was clearly frazzled in the first half, and needed to calm down and just play basketball. In the first half they let Denver’s unique play style get in their heads which made things harder than they needed to be. Even after they began producing, however, they still needed a little help. There was a mix up late in the game where a Denver player mistakenly fouled LA, which set the stage for the Bison to send it to overtime when they very likely could have lost in regulation (although LA missed the first of his 2 free throws).

NDSU easily (and perhaps should) have lost this game in regulation, but what really impressed me is that once again (IUPUI being the first time) they absolutely dominated in OT. They outscored the Pioneers 14-7 and ended up winning the game in an especially convincing fashion. Now, this is exactly how I’ve come to expect the Bison to play at home, but it wasn’t how they played for the majority of this game. So it was great to see that they still had something in the tank and were able to turn it on at the end there. ESPECIALLY when you consider our season-long problem of depth. The fact that our guys were able to go out there and put on that kind of a performance in OT, after playing a full game, and they DIDN’T have dead legs is very reassuring. This team is far tougher than I ever expected and far tougher than any freshman laden team as any right to be. No matter what their record looks like at the end of the year I’m incredibly proud of what I’ve seen out of this team so far, and can’t wait to watch them develop in the years to come.

HOWEVER the season isn’t over yet, and the Bison have yet another tough game coming up later today as they travel to Macomb for another difficult road test.

This game is particularly frightening for me because the Bison just played an OT game. They played extra minutes Thursday night, then had to travel and get ready for a Sunday afternoon game in a relatively short period of turn around. As if road games haven’t been hard enough for the Bison this year, now we have to worry about dead legs.

However, all fears aside, the Bison handled the Leathernecks fairly easily in Fargo last month. Last time the Bison were able to completely shut down Western’s starters, and leave them relying entirely on their bench for scoring. However, the bench did not disappoint as J.C. Fuller lit the Bison up for 21 and Dalan Ancrum poured in 16 of his own. The Bison will need to come out with the same kind of defensive performance they had in Fargo against WIU’s starters, and improve their play against the bench guys if they hope to pull off the road upset this time around. Western is coming off a home win against IUPUI, and they’re still 3-5 in conference so they’re not dead yet. A win against a tired Bison team in their home gym could be the beginning of a season saving stretch for the Leathernecks, so I certainly hope the Bison aren’t taking this one lightly.

All in all though I don’t think I’m too worried about this one. I wasn’t worried at all when Western came to Fargo, and my arrogance was rewarded with an impressive beat down. However, one can never erst easily when road games are involved, and I know I sound like a broken record but I’m really worried the Bison are gonna come out tired after that brutal Denver game. NDSU is far better than Western this year, and they’ve already proved that on the court. They should win this one and they should win it handily… even on the road. However, anything can happen when you get away from home, especially in conference play. Things just go wrong on the road. You give the home team a tiny bit of breathing space, and suddenly the crowd gets into it, and your whole team ends up rattled. That’s what happened to the Bison in that South Dakota game, and they picked up a crucial loss that cost them the Conference lead (which they still haven’t managed to take back from South Dakota State).

That South Dakota loss was the one bit of breathing room the Bison had. They gave up the one inch they could afford to surrender and absolutely CANNOT lose another road game to an inferior opponent this year if they want any chance at the Summit regular season title. Western is just one such inferior team, and whether its in their home gym or not the Bison can’t afford to lose this one. My expectations for this team have absolutely skyrocketed as the season has gone along, and I legitimately think they can challenge South Dakota and Oral Roberts for the regular season crown. However, if they want to have any chance they need to sweep their home games in conference and at least go 2-2 in their 4 remaining road games. Even that might not even be enough, but if this team wants to keep their hat in the ring down to the wire, it all needs to start here. The South Dakota game was really a game we couldn’t afford to lose and so is this Western game. Hopefully we don’t let another one slip away this time. Especially not with LA’s family in the crowd. Time to win one for the senior, and keep grinding out this excellent season.

Image via http://www.thesummitleague.org/