Arriving at the Bentson Bunker Fieldhouse, I grabbed my media pass and took my seat a few feet behind the baseline at the south end of the court.  Looking around, there wasn’t a seat to be had anywhere in the building.  Green and gold everywhere as more than 1600 Bison volleyball fanatics came to see a coronation.  This was to be The Night.  NDSU would make short work of IPFW, win their second consecutive Summit League championship and receive their automatic NCAA tournament bid.

Turns out IPFW wasn’t just happy to be there.  Go figure, they actually came into the match thinking they had a chance to win.  No one told them this wasn’t their party to crash.  Not in this arena where the Bison have been unbeatable.  Nope, this was The Night for NDSU to win the title in front of their loyal and deafening fans.

Final score: IPFW 3, NDSU 2.

I still can’t believe it and I watched every last dig, kill and service error over the course of two hours and change.  I had all but written the framework for my NDSU championship post before leaving my home Saturday night.  Minutes before the match, I went over to a co-worker from WDAY and said, rather cavalierly, “this shouldn’t take long… three and out, and then we’ll see where the NCAA puts us.”  My friend and everyone around her nodded their heads at what seemed a forgone conclusion.

Right now the only thing to conclude is that NDSU is on the outside looking in.  It will take a lot of hope, crossed fingers and what Bison fans hope is a very well-informed NCAA committee to give NDSU what should be a much-deserved NCAA tournament bid. 

Unfortunately, NCAA tournament selection committees don’t always award coveted at-large bids to mid-major conferences as often as it seems they should, no matter the sport.

This season I designated the North Dakota State University women’s volleyball team as The Official Team of The Christopher Gabriel Program.  There wasn’t a ceremony, no one on the team got little trophies or plaques – they didn’t even get certificates.  In fact, I’m not sure most of them even realize they were THE official team of the program, shocking as it may seem. 

Just because they’re Division 1 student-athletes with a calendar bursting at the seams full of academics, practices and games not to mention what one assumes are active social lives for each player, surely the importance of this distinction ranks somewhere on their radar.

The reason we chose to highlight them so much was because of their superb athletic ability, the collective personality (translation: joyous) of the team and their coach, Erich Hinterstocker.  Although I’m a college football and basketball nut, I’ve always loved volleyball.  And this team resonated for me on many levels.

To watch their season potentially come to an end in the arena that’s seen them win so convincingly, if not incredibly easily, in match after match bordered on surreal.  But as the phrase goes, that’s why they play the games.

I’m not from Fargo and I didn’t attend North Dakota State University.  We’ve lived here all of six months but in that time, several things have become “family” to us.  Our daughter’s kindergarten class and school, WDAY and the Bison women’s volleyball team. 

Upsets happen in sports; as a fan or player, when you’re on the winning side it’s a feeling you never want to go away.  But on the losing side – that feeling, too, is one that is equally unmistakable but for all the wrong reasons.

NDSU was beaten Saturday night by a team that played with a bit more hunger and passion.  There can be no question NDSU demonstrated throughout the season they were far and away the best team in the conference.  But on one Saturday night in late November, in an arena they’ve been so dominant, they were only second-best.

Ultimately though, that should not take away from what this Bison team has earned in a season that saw them overpower nearly every opponent:  An at-large berth in the upcoming Division 1 NCAA volleyball tournament.