Two-sided team achieves unpredictable feats
Youngest team in the nation sees room for improvement
On Sunday afternoon, the men’s basketball team completed their unpredictable season with a 72-64 loss at Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne and finished the season with a respectable 16-12 record.
The loss came shortly after the Bison handed the University of Mary a 37-point shellacking at the Bison Sports Arena earlier in the week.
The final two games of the team’s 28-game adventure ended with the same theme they carried with them through the season’s entirety. The theme for the year was at home the Bison were as tough as nails, but on the road, the team struggled immensely.
“ I think being the youngest team in the nation plays a hand in that,” Bison assistant Saul Phillips said of the team’s road woes. “The good news is that we were competitive on the road — we lost a lot of heartbreakers — but competing is the biggest thing you need with the team that we had.”
NDSU was 14-1 at home in the BSA — the best home-winning percentage there since the 1982-83 and 1983-84 seasons. The lone home loss of the year came against NCAA tournament-hopeful Manhattan.
Despite the setback from the Jaspers, NDSU took down Division I schools: Idaho State University, SDSU, University of Denver, Utah Valley State, University of Missouri-Kansas City, University of Idaho, IPFW, and in its historic first home Division I victory, Eastern Michigan University.
The trouble came when they left the comfy confines of the BSA. NDSU went 2-11 on the road, and many of the losses came to teams they crushed at home.
In mid-January, the Bison beat SDSU by 30. Then, in February, the two teams met again in Brookings, S.D., and the Jackrabbits, with two of their top players out and four football players newly added to their roster, defeated NDSU 67-65.
Before ending the season with a loss at IPFW, that at one point in the season lost 10 consecutive games, NDSU beat the Mastadons by 11 in Fargo.
A few of the road losses were even tougher to swallow after the Bison blew several large first-half leads. In a three-game road swing in the middle of the season, NDSU lost to University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Idaho State University and Drake, by a combined deficit of 10 points after holding substantial leads in each.
All the near-wins, however, cannot overshadow the success the Bison did have in their first full Division I basketball season.
In the 24 games versus true Division I opponents, NDSU won exactly half of them, including an incredible victory at the nationally ranked University of Wisconsin.
It is hard to believe all the success when one considers that entering into the season, the Bison had one player, senior Phil Hahn, with substantial playing time.
The closest thing NDSU had to a veteran was fourth-year, student-manager Joe Kittell.
Then Ben Woodside and Andre Smith came.
Head coach Tim Miles knew Woodside would be an impact player down the road, but not a dominant playmaker immediately.
“ I think we all had a good feeling, but his consistency and the staggering numbers he put up were unbelievable,” Phillips said. “The neat thing about Ben is he listens and wants to get better. Hopefully, we will have a monster on our hands here in a couple years.”
As a freshman, he led all Division I independents in scoring (17.5 ppg) and assists (5.1 apg) and hit the third most free throws in school history. Wednesday he was voted MVP among Indipendents.
CBSsportsline.com ranked Woodside 11th in the country among guards, according to a system that takes into account a combination of offensive and defensive stats.
Smith was also a pleasant surprise. Just one year removed from playing junior college ball, the forward became a force to be reckoned with in the paint, second among all independents in rebounds.
In the implausible win over Wisconsin, Smith was the key to Miles’ game plan of forcing the outside shot and not letting the Badgers get any quality inside looks.
Largely because of Smith’s play down low, Wisconsin shot a rancid 22 percent from the field.
“ I was at Wisconsin for three years as an assistant watching Big Ten big men go through there and not do what he did,” Phillips said of Smith. “No question Andre surpassed expectations on every level, the biggest thing was that he proved himself to be one of the best team guys I have ever been around. Flat out. All he cares about is winning. I wouldn’t trade Andre Smith for anybody.”
In addition to Smith and Woodside, NDSU got great help from freshman Mike Nelson and Brett Winkelman. Nelson and Winkelman averaged 12 points each.
Winkelman, who constantly wowed fans with his athleticism, was also second on the team in rebounds, with just under seven a game.
In addition to Austin Pennick, Sam Sussenguth and Josh Vaughn, who sat out this season in the Bison redshirt program, NDSU has signed two top-notch high school players, Freddy Coleman and Michael Tviedt, to join the team next season.
As Miles’ squad enters the monotonous off-season training regimen, it is optimistic of the future and well aware of its glowing flaw — the road.