The North Dakota State Bison could be forgiven for looking past Thursday night's Summit League clash with the Denver Pioneers. The Bison knew they would be playing at home, and with a 13-7 record to the Pioneers' 9-11 mark the game looked a foregone conclusion. However, early on it appeared the Bison would be made to pay for that mistake.
It looked that way at halftime, as Denver jumped out to a 26-16 halftime lead. In the locker room, Bison head coach David Richman needed to make some serious adjustments to avoid an upset. He did just that, spurring the Bison on to a 23-12 run in the last 5 minutes of the game and overtime to pull away from the Pioneers.
Bison guard Lawrence Alexander scored 21 points in 44 minutes to lead his team to victory, while Kory Brown picked up the rest of the scoring slack. His 11 points couple with Alexander's 21 accounted for more than half of the team's overall point total, which was fairly unsurprising given that the starters played the majority of the game. With the exception of Carlin Dupree, the starting line played at least 30 minutes each and Paul Miller came off the bench to give 35 hard minutes.
Denver had 4 players play over 30 minutes, and guard Nate Engesser lead the way from the bench, pouring in 15 points. His bench points were key, as 25 of their 54 points were scored by their bench in the game. Denver forced 13 turnovers, scoring 11 points off of them.
The Bison are next in action on Saturday afternoon when they play Western Illinois at 3:00 pm ET. Denver will next take the court on Saturday as well when they play South Dakota State at 4:30 ET.