The Bison opened up the 2024-2025 season this past Wednesday in an exhibition game with the 11th-ranked team in Division ll from across the Red River, Minnesota State University Moorhead. This was a highly anticipated matchup, considering the recent success of the MSUM basketball program. The game certainly lived up to the hype, as the Dragons were breathing fire early on. MSUM had a 14-point lead at one point in this game. Jacob Beeninga had a huge game with 20 points and was 9-15 from the field. Brennan Watkins had a huge day for the Herd, as he scored 17 points and played over 35 minutes. Considering it was an exhibition game, guys like Noah Feddersen played only 25 minutes, along with Jacari White. Nonetheless, the Herd went on a 10-2 run late in the second half to down the Dragons in a 67-63 final. The crowd was exceptional, considering it was a DII opponent. In the postgame interview, Jackson Moni was asked if this felt like an exhibition game, and he responded, “No, it felt like a real game, it was good to get out with the guys.”
This is a matchup that Dave Richman said in the postgame could certainly happen again each year. In the postgame comments, Richman explained how games like this can be viewed as a trap game for the Bison. “I think there’s a bunch of people that maybe thought we should have won by more and expected us to win by more,” Richman explained. All things considered, it was a good warm-up game to begin the season. The Bison have another exhibition game on Monday against the Jamestown Jimmies from just 100 miles west down I-29. This game will be at the SHAC at 7:00 p.m.
2024-2025 Season Preview
The 2023-2024 North Dakota State basketball season ended with a very underwhelming 68-58 loss to St. Thomas in the 1st round of the Summit League basketball tournament. That loss snapped a five-year streak of reaching the league championship game-winning in the 2019 and 2020 seasons. This was their worst finish in the Summit League tournament since 2017, when they fell to IUPUI in the 1st round. The Bison come into this season with almost a completely new roster. Only seven of the 15 players on their roster this season were on the team in the 2023-2024 season. The Bison enter this season ranked No. 3 in the Summit League preseason poll behind No. 1 Kansas City and No. 2 South Dakota State. Bison senior Jacari White earned himself preseason second team All-Summit League for 2024-2025. You can’t forget they are led by 11th-year head coach Dave Richman, who has 190 career wins and three Summit League titles as a head coach.
The Bison will be without their two leading scorers from last season in, Boden Skunberg, who transferred to Illinois State, and Andrew Morgan, who transferred to Nebraska. The Bison’s opponents this season combined for a winning percentage of 571%. Some non-conference games to highlight on the schedule are Illinois State on Nov. 7th, which will be a homecoming for Boden Skunberg, who transferred out of NDSU last season. They also take on Butler, who is a historic basketball school. They have a round-robin style tournament in Birmingham, Alabama, over the week of Nov. 26th-Nov. 28th. They will play Samford, who was 29-6 last season, West Georgia, who was 27-6 last season, and Utah Valley, who was 16-16, so the competition they will be playing down there will be solid. They also have a home and away-series with CSU Bakersfield. The road game will be on Nov. 11th, and the home game will be on Dec. 23rd.
The conference schedule is how it always is; they play each team once at home and once on the road. If you’re looking forward to the rivalry games at home, they host UND on Saturday, Jan. 25th. They host South Dakota State on Thursday, Jan. 30th. They kick off the conference schedule with a redemption-type game as they host St. Thomas, the team who knocked them off in the first round last season. An additional note to their schedule is that they have three games on national television (not including ESPN+). They will play at St. Thomas on Feb. 2nd on CBS along with hosting Oral Roberts on Feb.13th on CBS. Overall, this team is just as put together as last season, but they had some locker room issues and didn’t exactly have the greatest chemistry within their team. Looking over their schedule, I predict a 21-11 overall record with a 10-6 conference record, which would put them right around second or third in the conference heading into tournament play.