Helping out a friend
Last week, a friend - we’ll call him Jim - came back to town after being gone for a few years and wanted to talk about NDSU athletics.
First thing he started asking about was Bison basketball. After I briefed Jim on the current state of the teams, I told him that both teams were scheduled to play South Dakota State over the weekend.
Jim, without hesitation, asked me how bad the women’s team was going to beat SDSU.
After holding back my laughter, I told him that the NDSU football team had a better chance of beating Ohio State than the women’s team had of beating SDSU.
He couldn’t believe it. After all, during the 2003-04 season - the last time Jim was in town - the Bison women went to Brookings and topped the Jackrabbits by nine.
Jim then asked how bad the NDSU men would lose.
I had to break it to Jim that the odds weren’t very good that the Bison men would lose to SDSU.
He again couldn’t believe it because the last time Jim was around, NDSU went to Brookings and got beat by 24 points.
Saturday at the Bison Sports Arena and Frost Arena in Brookings, both the men’s and women’s programs of NDSU and SDSU were magnified.
What was seen under the microscope were two schools whose basketball programs have switched roles since they transitioned to Division I in 2004. In the women’s game in Fargo, NDSU fell to the Jackrabbits 86-45.
After splitting with SDSU during the 2003-04 season, the Bison now are 41 points worse then the Jacks?
NDSU won more than 20 games that season. This year, the team will be happy to get to 10 wins.
There is no doubting that SDSU has a great program.
The team already beat solidified Division I programs Southern California, Virginia, Kansas and Minnesota this season.
It maybe wasn’t a surprise that the Bison women fell to SDSU on Saturday, but the way in which they did - in front of 2,710 fans - showed the amount of disparity that has come between these two teams.
Down in Brookings, Jim was truly puzzled. He wanted to know who all these guys were scoring, and why they were so young.
Jim, of course, was referring to NDSU sophomores Mike Nelson, Ben Woodside and Brett Winkelman.
Saturday’s performance - in which the three combined to score 62 points - gave Jim a perfect picture of how the men’s team has transformed in the past few years.
The Bison men, similar to the SDSU women and opposite the NDSU women and SDSU men, have loaded their teams with talent.
This talent has made the transition simpler for the teams, while the lack of it has been the source of many headaches for the NDSU women and SDSU men.
So I got Jim all caught up on the NDSU basketball programs, but now he wants me to explain why they are still playing in the Bison Sports Arena. Shucks.