The big ones

[roadwarrior]

The Bison men have played six big guys this season:

Marquette
Texas Tech
Colorado State
Kansas State
Iowa State
Minnesota

We played not so well in two of those games and lost both, but not by huge blowouts. Three of them were played close from start to finish and we only lost by a couple of points. And of course the upset win over Marquette. In McFeely's blog, he ranks the six teams in the order that I listed above and I kind of agree with him. I was lucky enough to be able to get to five of the games and it sure was fun as a Bison fan to be playing those schools.

Who remembers which teams we played in november and december five years ago?

We have a ways to go (mostly depth wise) to be able to beat these big guys on a consistent basis. Once we get through our "conference" portion of our independent schedule, next year will be completely different with 18 conference games to look forward to.

[lakesbison]

Princeton is a good team, IVY league and have made runs in NCAA's!

UWGbay made a run in NCAA's few years back as well.

can't forget those!!

[coloradobison]

Agreed, depth is the biggest issue, when a couple of the starting 5 have off nights, we need someone to come in off the bench and be able to contribute 10-15 on any given night. Hopefully we can get there in the coming years and overcome off shooting nights.

[scottheck]

Depth was also the difference I noticed. The Bison only went 3 deep the entire game. At the end when everyone looked like they needed a blow, there was not enough confidence in those players to put them in the game. ISU consistently went 5 deep.

[tcbison]

Depth was also the difference I noticed. *The Bison only went 3 deep the entire game. *At the end when everyone looked like they needed a blow, there was not enough confidence in those players to put them in the game. *ISU consistently went 5 deep.

Good point Scott. The Bison did force some turnovers late into the game but you could tell the players were getting tired. I think NDSU could have pressured ISU more if they could go deeper into the bench.

I was really surprised on how NDSU got outrebounded in the game. That hasn't happened much in the last two years. ISU had some offensive boards that really helped them pull away. NDSU got nothing on the offensive boards.

[scottheck]

There was an earlier reference to weak side boxing, that didn't happen, especially early in the game when nothing was dropping: 1 chance only. That hurt and it didn't improve much throughout the game.

Reffing is never an excuse, in my opinion. You could always have done something better or different to not be in the position where a call hurts you.
However, Miles was on the defensive early when, as RW mentions, at 2 minutes the ref yelled at him to "shut up." It had started with 30 seconds run off the clock. It was obvious then, we wouldn't get the benefit of any doubt.

[99Bison]

The weak side boxing was ok in this game, the outside boxing was non-existant... The rebounders came right down the lane un-touched from the perimiter, which means either no one else has crashed the boards from the outside all year on us, or the perimiter guys weren't getting a body on the outside guys... or a combination of both.