Well I paid eight dollars so I could watch the on-demand video of the Oakland-North Dakota State game when I got home from work Thursday night and it was never loaded on the on-demand portion of gobison.com and as of 5 p.m. today before I had to come into the office it still wasn’t loaded. So I’m a little annoyed and still haven’t seen the actual game.

I thought I would give some of my thoughts from looking at the box score and reading the postgame quotes. First off it was a good effort on the road by Oakland and it appears they ran out of gas. It was tied at 64 with 6:35 left when the Bison went on a 13-0 run. The Grizzlies have just eight scholarship players and are getting nothing out of Matt Samuels right now.

Expecting Johnathon Jones and Erik Kangas to play 40 minutes a night is tough to do, but at the same time I can’t blame Oakland coach Greg Kampe for doing it.
Samuels shows flashes of potential, but can’t be trusted to not make a turnover or take a bad shot. He seems almost too eager to prove himself and part of that is because he knows he’s not going to get many minutes. It’s the chicken and egg kind of thing. Do you wait until he plays good to give him more minutes or give him minutes and hope he calms down and plays within the gameplan? I don’t have the answers, but I do know this the chances of a league title aren’t very good so resting your stars and giving the freshman some minutes as well as John Kast might not be a bad idea. At least you will know what you have come tournament time and won't kill your studs during the regular season by playing them 40 minutes.

My other thought and Kampe mentioned this in the postgame quotes, is beating NDSU three times in a year would be hard to do. Now the Bison don’t have that extra motivation should the two teams meet in the tournament. Not that the four fifth-year seniors need anymore motivation, but still I think it's a good thing to get that first win out of the way for them. Also no offense to either of them, but I don’t think Lucas Moormann is going to shoot 5-for-6 from the field and 4-for-4 from the free-throw line and Michael Tveidt is going to shoot 4-for-7 and 2-for-2 on too many nights. The Bison’s role players had good nights Thursday and the Bison, who are shoot 75 percent on the season, shot 95 percent from the free-throw line. Part of that can be playing at home. I am just hoping their is a third game between the two teams on a neutral floor because I expect it would be another good one.