Author Topic: Woodside shot in final seconds propels NDSU to NCAA tournament berth  (Read 4466 times)

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Offline pmp6nl

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Woodside shot in final seconds propels NDSU to NCAA tournament berth
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Ben Woodside’s medium jumper with 3 seconds left gave North Dakota State a 66-64 win over Oakland University Tuesday for the Summit League championship and a berth in the NCAA tournament.

By: Associated Press, INFORUM

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Ben Woodside’s medium jumper with 3 seconds left gave North Dakota State a 66-64 win over Oakland University Tuesday for the Summit League championship and a berth in the NCAA tournament.

No. 1 seed NDSU (26-6) trailed through much of the game – by 14 points in the first half – and needed a rally in the final five minutes to win.

A long field goal attempt by Oakland’s Johnathon Jones at the final horn bounced out.

Michael Tveidt led NDSU with 21 points. Woodside added 17.

Erik Kangas and Will Hudson each had 16 points for No. 3 seed Oakland (22-12). Jones added 15 and Keith Benson had 14.

For more, see tomorrow's Forum.

From: http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/233650/

Congrats Bison!
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Offline pmp6nl

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Right side? Wrong side? In NCAA tourney debate, there's just Woodside
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2009, 06:33:56 PM »
Pretty awesome article:

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Right side? Wrong side? In NCAA tourney debate, there's just Woodside
March 11, 2009
By Ray Ratto
CBSSports.com Columnist

Nothing pleases college basketball fans quite as much as trying to tweak perfection. You know, the NCAA tournament structure.

There are too many teams, as argued by the elitists who remember the good old days of the Wooden Era. No, there aren't enough, as argued most often by Jim Boeheim. No, they're the wrong ones, as argued most often by ACC, Big East, Big 10 and Big 12 fans.

Well, fine. Except that in rebuttal, we offer Ben Woodside

Woodside made himself the most popular fella in an entire state Tuesday night when his 17-footer with three seconds left propelled North Dakota State past Oakland in the Summit Conference tournament championship game. That shot put North Dakota State in the NCAA tournament for the first time ever, in the school's first year of Division I.

Best of all, it made North Dakota the 47th state, plus the District of Columbia, to have skin in the tournament game. An entire state is now absorbed into office pool fever, and committed to a sport that it has never been known to care all that much about.

And if Ben Woodside ever has to buy a drink in the state ever again, we'll be very disappointed in our Dakotan brethren.

You see, this is why the tournament is at its best in these three weeks -- the two weeks of conference tournaments, and the first weekend of the real tournament. It is open to everyone for dreaming purposes, but you still have to earn your way in by surviving the first two weeks -- the perfect egalitarian structure.

And while we're not blind to the more mercenary aspects of the whole thing (this isn't a cash cow for the NCAA, it's an entire herd), we know that there are few things that make a university, a town or in this case an entire state vibrate in quite the same way as that first NCAA tournament invitation.

North Dakota has had its intercollegiate moments, true. UND is a persistent contender to make the Frozen Four, for example. But North Dakota State has had a more modest history, until Woodside's jumper emptied the stands and pot-committed a state that until now had largely been known by the geographically disinterested as the one that didn't have Mount Rushmore.

Today, the state is properly hung over, and there is no real substitute for that. It is a feeling that couldn't be replicated if you put all 345 teams in the tournament, or even expanded it to a more bracket-manageable 256. You also couldn't replicate it if, as the big basketball schools would like, you got rid of automatic qualifiers like the Summit winner.

The NCAA tournament became a huge national event because of that, Unlike any other sport, it allows everyone (except Alaska, alas) to dream the dream. Indeed, the only states that have never known that joy on either the men's or women's sides are South Dakota, New Hampshire and Alaska -- and New Hampshire has the Frozen Four.

This, with all due respect to the 10th-place team in the ACC, is the best (and most lucrative) part of the tournament -- that it can hook everyone. Except, of course, Alaska, which has no Division I presence.

You can't have this with any other structure. If everyone gets in, then there is no sense of achievement. If you restrict it BCS-style, too many places have no shot at all, ever. Even expanding it in the Boeheim Plan, which is to go to 96 teams, schools like North Dakota State are sentenced to play-in games, and play-in games just aren't the same.

The argument Boeheim advances, that good coaches at big schools get fired for missing the tournament, is true, but that speaks to a different disturbing trend -- the revolting power of rich alums to run programs with a checkbook and a hair trigger. It is the equivalent of curing a heroin addict with heroin.

And besides, why shouldn't Saul Phillips, the North Dakota State coach, get his moment too? Maybe he'd like to be a good coach at a big school someday too, and moments like this make that at least conceivable. And until that day, he doesn't have to buy a drink in North Dakota, either.

There is something to be said for preserving the NCAA tournament structure as it is, and this is it. A place that never felt involved suddenly getting its day -- what's better than that? And yes, while it's conceivable that North Dakota State might never win a game in the ACC ever and therefore should never deny a prestige basketball school its place, we don't have a divine right of kings, and we shouldn't. Somewhere there should still be room for an unscheduled Christmas like the one in North Dakota today, and this is the best way to do it.

Just ask Ben Woodside.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Offline pmp6nl

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Bison to face Kansas in first round of NCAA tournament in Minneapolis
« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2009, 05:54:12 PM »
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Bison to face Kansas in first round of NCAA tournament in Minneapolis
The North Dakota State University men’s basketball team on Sunday received a No. 14 seed for the NCAA tournament and will face the defending champion Kansas Jayhawks, the No. 3 seed, in the Midwest Regional.

By: Forum staff reports, INFORUM


The North Dakota State University men’s basketball team on Sunday received a No. 14 seed for the NCAA tournament and will face the defending champion Kansas Jayhawks, the No. 3 seed, in the Midwest Regional.

The teams will square off Friday in Minneapolis.

The Minnesota Gophers received a No. 10 seed and will face the seventh-seeded Texas Longhorns on Thursday in Greensboro, N.C.

Louisville is the tournament's No. 1 overall seed.

For more, see tomorrow’s Forum.

From http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/234220/group/home/
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