Women shoot for an upset
After three long, grueling months, the women’s basketball team will finally play get a shot at its rival.
SDSU comes to town Saturday with the top record of all the Division I independents at 15-5, including 3-0 against other independents.
The Jacks feature Megan Vogel, who was last week’s NCAA Division I idependent Player of the Week.
Vogel averaged 25.5 points per game in the two games against the Bison last year.
This season, the senior averaging 16.9 points and 5.8 rebounds per game and is a big reason why her team is favored in this game.
“If you look at them on paper you would assume that they might get the win,” NDSU coach Amy Ruley said. “But fortunately we’re not going to play it on paper, we’re going to play it at the Bison Sports Arena.”
The BSA has been a good place for the Bison to play this year as the team is 5-2 at home.
Saturday’s game will be the beginning of a five game home stand for NDSU.
The Bison and Jacks have five common opponents so far this year with the most notable being the University of Minnesota.
The Bison defeated Minnesota 62-48 in Fargo while the Jacks went down to Williams Arena in Minneapolis and defeated the Gophers 59-58 on a buzzer-beater that Big 10 Conference officials later said should not have counted.
“We’ve been waiting all year for Minnesota and SDSU,” senior forward Danni Heintzelman said. “We feel that things are coming together for us, people are stepping up and we’re just excited.”
The Bison are coming off a two game road swing where they picked up a 71-63 win over Utah Valley State and lost 59-57 to Texas Pan-American on a jumper with 2.2 seconds left.
Heintzelman scored a season-high 15 points against Utah Valley State.
“I feel like our team feels like we’re starting to hit on all cylinders,” Ruley said. “We’re starting to get more people involved. We’re not putting all the scoring load on Lisa (Bue) and Brenda (Slyt), although they’ve come through for us pretty consistently.”
This weekend also features a reunion for some of the great teams in Bison history as players from the five Division II National Championship teams along with players from the nine North Central Conference Championship teams will be honored.
Also on Saturday the Extreme Team, an acrobatic dunking group that has performed at NBA and WNBA games, will be performing at halftime.
“Having our alumni back supporting us will be fun for us as a staff and for our players,” Ruley said. “Having the promotions group get the Extreme Team here for us makes it feel like a Division I basketball weekend.”