The Bison come to Davis following a surprisingly close 65-67 loss at Corvalis on Monday. Last season, they finished with a respectable 21-11 record, going 10-6 in the Summit Conference. This season, their only returning starter was last year’s leading rebounder, 6’ 10” Noah Feddersen, Another player to watch is Markhi Strickland, a transfer from Western Michigan, who lead all scorers with 17 points against the Beavers.
It isn’t clear from the box score how the Bison were able to stay so close to Oregon State as they only shot 39% from the field, 19% from beyond the arc and 63.6% from the free throw line. They did have 66 field goal attempts to Oregon State’s 45, hitting on 6 more than the Beavers. What is interesting is that North Dakota State did better on rebounds, assists and turnovers than OSU. The main reason the Beavers won was that they scored 12 more points from the charity stripe than NDSU did. It’s hard to say how good either team is based on one game, especially when both teams had a lot of new players.
The game will be broadcast on ESPN+
Note of interest: While the Aggies have Nils Cooper, son of former NBA star Michael Cooper, North Dakota State has Max Majerle, son of former NBA star Dan Majerle.
I think this will be a very tough game for the Aggies. The Aggies have a lot of potential but, from what we saw against Menlo, we're definitely a work in progress.