Remember the Name: Ben Woodside

The North Dakota State Bison star drops sixty.

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We knew a kid named "Woodside" once who looked remarkably like this. Small world.

A 5'11" point guard named Ben Woodside just wrote his name in the NCAA record books next to that of "Pistol" Pete Maravich. Woodside, a fifth-year senior for the North Dakota State Bison, dropped 60 points in a neutral-court, triple-OT loss to Stephen F. Austin on Friday night. He now ranks third in the nation in scoring, behind Chicago State's David Holston and Davidson's Stephen Curry, whose two 44-point efforts were the season's standard until Woodside went off.

Thirty of his points came at the free throw line. Maravich once made 30 of 31 in a LSU/Oregon State game to set the bar.

Woodside, who also grabbed eight boards and dished eight assists in the 112-111 setback for the Bison, is one of five redshirt seniors on this year's Bison squad, which will be eligible to take the Summit League's auto-bid for the first time following a gradual transition to D1 hoops. Woodside and teammates Bret Winkelman, Mike Nelson, Lucas Moorman, and Tom Lundy all elected to sit out early in their careers in order to be eligible for this one shot at the Big Dance. With league bully Oral Roberts stumbling to a 2-7 record that includes a December road loss to the Bison, the omens are looking good for NDSU.

The Bison wrap up their non-conference schedule with a trip to USC on December 20th, and a home game with Northern Arizona two days later. Then they put their league-leading 2-0 mark on the line with a New Year's Eve game against their conference rivals, the Indiana/Purdue-Fort Wayne Mastodons.

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