Getty The South Dakota Coyotes will visit the North Dakota State Bison.
The North Dakota State Bison will host the South Dakota Coyotes on Friday.
The game is scheduled to start at 9 p.m. ET. While it won’t be broadcast nationally on television anywhere in the US, you can still watch a live stream of the game on your computer, phone or streaming device via ESPN+, the new digital streaming service from ESPN that has exclusive coverage to dozens of college basketball games–and several other sports–every week.
You can sign up for a free 7-day trial of ESPN+ right here, and you can then watch a live stream of the game on your computer via ESPN.com, or on your phone, tablet or streaming device via the ESPN app.
If you can’t watch live, all games–including South Dakota vs North Dakota State–that are streamed on ESPN+ are also available to be watched afterwards on-demand via ESPN.com or the ESPN app.
South Dakota vs North Dakota State Preview
South Dakota is 6-6 and on a two-game losing streak. The Kansas Jayhawks blew them out 89-53 before the Coyotes fell to the Southern Miss Golden Eagles at the Sanford Coyote Sports Center 66-60.
“Their size obviously bothered us,” Coyotes head coach Todd Lee said after the loss to the Jayhawks, according to the Associated Press. “I was disappointed at halftime, thought it could have been a game. And the second half we didn’t compete.”
Against Kansas, then the nations No. 1 team, the Coyotes trailed by eight in the final minute of the first half before the Jayhawks pulled away in the second.
“The two timeouts in the first half had no strategy to them, except wanting to get someone out of the game,” Kansas coach Bill Self said after his team’s win, per AP. “We didn’t play well at all the first half.”
The Coyotes shot 37.9 percent against the Jayhawks and 35.3 percent against the Golden Eagles.
“We’re not a very good shooting team. Probably one of the worst in the country,” Lee said after falling to Southern Miss, according to The Volante. “You’re not gonna win many games shooting 35 percent.”
Lee added: “In the second half, I see us shooting wide open jump shots, and I see them making contested jump shots. I don’t know how to change that. We’re right there guarding them, but they make shots, and then we go down to the other end and miss wide open shots.”
Junior guard Triston Simpson was the only Coyote to shoot 50 percent or better. He went 4-of-7 for a team-high 17 points.
“I feel like, at times, we get a little too comfortable with the lead and it comes back to bite us in the butt,” Simpson said, per The Volante. “We have seven losses and four or five of those losses we had a lead in the second half, so we gotta work on finishing games.”
The Bison are 5-8, and 4-8 against Division I foes; they blew out the Division III Northland College Lumberjacks their last time out.
Before that, they were the Montana Grizzlies’ 19th straight home victims. Montana rode a 22-5 run in the second half to a 66-60 win.
“Two things that had been very difficult to do,” Grizzlies coach Travis DeCuire said, according to GoGriz.com. “One is energy. We brought energy defensively; we got more aggressive. We stopped trapping the ball screens because of the offense they were running, and we brought back our aggression. The biggest thing is we moved the ball; the ball got from one side to the other, and we had pace. Once we got it back we made our run.”