Good interview with Dom on the media blog.
He is the GOAT for NDSU basketball. By the time he was a senior Ben could of started for 99% of the DI teams in the tournament. The biggest exception was KU and Collins. KU was such a tough draw for us that year as they had the one guy who could equalize Ben's shooting ability. It took a career night for him to do it, but Collins points made the difference.
Based on that game alone... not too far off though, #2 may be a bit high, but based on performance I'd have to say he was in the top 10 that day, but Woody played out of his mind (no doubt as this wasn't his typical run of the mill game) in that game. I'd watched a lot of his games over the previous 3-4 years I never once see him put on a game like that.
Collins for KU also put on a show it was a great game to watch imo. To me I think another tipping point also was Aldrich we had no defense for him other than fouling and got Moorman on the bench for significant periods of the game. Just didn't have another big who could equalize him by fouling and/or defending.
Crazy thing was that section of the bracket had a bunch of "upsets" that year. NDSU would have ended up playing Dayton the next round (IIRC) if they'd won and they definitely didn't look unbeatable in their win. RMU almost upset Mich St too and USC was a lower seed that won in that section of the bracket.
Woodside had 37 and Collins didn't score 39, I remember Woodside led all scorers. It was close though...
All I remember is Collins shooting a ton and scoring a lot but missing a bunch as well...the one that made the true difference was Aldrich IMO, it seemed as though he couldn't miss....tough to miss wide open dunks I guess, I remember thinking if we had someone that could guard this guy, we might have a chance to win this game but it seemed like all he did was dunk after dunk after dunk...this is all I remember.
the turning point was probably Mike Nelsons 3 that spun out...NDSU was down like 2 or 3....after that, KU scored the next few buckets deflating everybody.