The Herd took home their 6th win of the season on Saturday

NDSU men’s basketball took on the Eastern Tennessee State University Buccaneers in a shootout in Fargo. The Bison came away with 78-68 over the now 8-2 Buccaneers.

A big crowd of 2,658 showed up to the Scheels Center to see the victory. NDSU started strong right out of the gate going on 14-2 run to start the game. The run included three 3-pointers from Cameron Hunter, Tyree Eady, and Vinnie Shahid.

The Buccaneers did storm back and make it a 14-14. The Herd refused to relinquish the lead, after four straight successful free throws from Tyson Ward and a layup from Rocky Kreuser, it was 20-16, NDSU.

The points would keep on coming for NDSU, the score by halftime ended half-up, 33-25. Tyson Ward already had 11 points by the end of the half. Seven of those points came from his 7-7 successful free throws. He would have two more in the second half.

NDSU posted a decent 43% for field goals and 33% from beyond the paint, thanks to Ward as well as Maleeck Harden-Hayes.

In the second half, the points started bouncing back and forth between teams. It started with a 22-22 run between both squads. Kreuser started the half off with a big dunk.

Jared Samuelson had a big three-pointer to get the Bison up to 50 points. It would be his only points of the game during his eight minutes of play.

The back and forth continued and the half ended with NDSU scoring 45 and ETSU 43 in the second period. This made the game finish out at 78-68.

The remainder of the half saw another nice dunk from Kreuser as well as one from Ward. There were also five good free throws from Vinnie Shahid plus two from Kreuser.

It was obviously a big night for all three of the Bison players. Add in Hunter, and those were the top four scores for NDSU. Ward and Kreuser led with 17 points apiece. Ward had an astounding 9-9 free throws. On top of that, he led the team in rebounds with nine.

Kresuer led in field goals with even went two for two on free throws. The Bison were great from the charity stripe all night long.

The team totaled 26-30 in free throws by the end of the night, one-third of their points. The team also made 38% of the three-pointers over the course of the night.

After the win, NDSU is now 6-4 this season. Their next game is Wednesday, Dec. 11 against the 2-8 California North Ridge Matadors.