By Matt Kirkle
SIOUX FALLS, SD–March is heralded for being the best month of the calendar year for college basketball. Cinderella programs take down acclaimed blue-bloods, and crazy becomes the norm. Any basketball consumer drools at the thought of a Mercer beating a Duke. It’s the beauty of a sport where, more than any other one, any team can win on any day. If shots are falling, and the other team plays a tad off, you can find yourself beating big-brother programs on the biggest stage. However, for a lot of programs—March is an executioner. The regular season successes and individual accomplishments watch innocently as the teams with nothing to lose battle against the teams with now completely clean slates.
The Bison went into Tuesday night’s championship matchup with Omaha, absolutely starving. After taking care of business against Oral Roberts in the first round, and beating their brand-new best friends from Macomb who took down North Dakota State’s biggest obstacle to get to the championship game, North Dakota State was in prime position. Now they had to worry about winning just one more.
The confidence was oozing from the Bison during warm-ups. Lots of laughing, smiling, even some half-court shots from Tyson Ward and Vinnie Shahid as they went into the locker room before the game. Omaha looked more serious, like nervously zoned-in. It almost looked like concern, or tenseness. That was the first red-flag that the “Upset Monster” was lingering somewhere inside the Denny Sanford Premier Center.
Omaha had glimpses of conference-champion caliber play throughout the game, but North Dakota State took advantage of multiple cold-spells from the Mavericks to come away with their fourth Summit League tournament title in the last ten years.
Both teams traded blows for a majority of the first half, with the Bison leading much of the way. North Dakota State led 29-25 with 6:20 to go in the first half, when they proceeded to go on a 10-0 run aided by more foul trouble for Matt Pile. His eight first half minutes helped Vinnie Shahid started heating up. The Bison ran a lethal pick-and-roll offense all game long with Shahid’s ability to turn the corner off of ball screens or create an isolation for himself against Brett Barney or Wanjang Tut when they had to switch onto him. Along with that, the Bison made seven three-pointers in the first half to give North Dakota State some breathing room heading into halftime with a 41-27 lead.
The Mavericks, who looked flustered for the back half of the first period offensively, shot out of a cannon to begin the half. Two tough three’s from Zach Jackson and a few finishes from Pile at the rim helped the Mavs start the half on a 12-2 run before the first media timeout to cut the 14-point halftime deficit to just four.
The Mavs could never hang around for long enough to overwhelm the Bison. North Dakota State took advantage of a few Omaha mistakes to respond right back with an 8-0 run to bring the lead back to twelve just four minutes later. The Mavericks proceeded to counterpunch right back with a 12-0 run to tie the game at 51 with Pile getting an additional free throw opportunity to take the lead. It felt like with just over 8:00 to play, that Omaha was going to put their foot on the throttle and run away with their first NCAA tournament bid.
Shahid put it on himself to lead NDSU to the promise-land. He tormented the Omaha defense all night, and put the final touches on his MVP performance that put the Mavericks on their backs for good. He scored the teams next seven points and brought the Bison back up by nine, leading 60-51 with 3:15 left. Omaha wasn’t doing themselves any favors with their shot-selection down the stretch; many of their shots coming very early in the shot clock, or with defenders guarding fairly closely.
The nail in the coffin on the Mavs tournament run was a three-pointer from Jared Samuelson, a Gretna, Nebraska native who was 1-4 from three at that point despite his 46% average. The trey put the Bison up nine with just over a minute to play. From there, the Mavericks panicked and forced tough shots as if there was little to no time on the clock. They took two no-pass, contested three-pointers before the 50 second mark. North Dakota State fit into the glass slipper, and won 73-63 to cap-off an improbable championship run, and solidify their spot in the NCAA tournament.
Mitch Hahn led the way for Omaha scoring all of his 16 points in the second half, while Jackson added 15 and Pile finished with 12. Omaha finished with a D-I school record for total wins (21) and conference wins (13). They were also the most improved team in college basketball from 2017-2018, improving by twelve games.
