The North Dakota State Bison don't do moral victories — they do actual ones, in March, against teams with ten times their budget. And the 2025-26 season was the loudest statement yet: a school-record 27 wins, a 27-8 record, a sweep of the Summit League regular season and tournament championships, and a sixth NCAA Tournament berth since 2009. In Fargo, they don't hope to win in March — they expect to.
David Richman, the head coach since 2014, was named Summit League Coach of the Year for the second time — his first came back in 2014-15, his debut season. In between, he built the most consistent winner in the league's modern history. This past spring, NDSU rewarded him with a five-year contract extension through the 2030-31 season, a bet that the Bison standard isn't going anywhere. Richman sits near the top of the school's all-time wins list, and he's hunting the record.
The 2025-26 team was a complete machine. Trevian Carson was named to the All-Summit League first team, the All-Newcomer Team and the All-Defensive Team — a rare triple — after averaging 11.9 points, 5.9 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.6 steals while shooting 49 percent overall, 40 percent from three and 96 percent at the free-throw line. Damari Wheeler-Thomas made the second team at 13.4 points per game. Andy Stefonowicz earned honorable mention while leading the entire league in assists at 5.1 per game, shooting 42 percent from beyond the arc. And Noah Feddersen was voted the Summit League's Sixth Man of the Year, pouring in 10.9 points off the bench on 65 percent shooting in league play.
The NCAA Tournament sent the Bison to Buffalo for a first-round date with Michigan State — the kind of draw that defines mid-major March. The Spartans' size and athleticism won the day, but the Bison belonged on the floor, the way they always do. Playing in nine of the past twelve Summit League tournament championship games — including five straight from 2019 through 2023 — will do that for a program's confidence.
The origin story still gets told in Fargo bars. In 2009, NDSU's first year of NCAA tournament eligibility, the Bison took defending national champion Kansas to the wire behind Ben Woodside's 37-point masterpiece — one of the great individual performances in tournament history. The Jayhawks survived 84-74, but the message was delivered nationally: the Summit League's new power wasn't here to participate.
The signature win came in 2014, when NDSU stunned fifth-seeded Oklahoma 80-75 in overtime, with Lawrence Alexander's tying three at the regulation buzzer living forever in Bison lore. It was the program's first tournament victory and one of the great opening-round thrillers of the decade. The 2019 team added another chapter, winning the Summit tournament to earn a date with Duke — the sport's biggest brand — in the first round.
The Scheels Center in Fargo — the SHAC — is a fortress in winter: loud, cold-blooded, and full of fans who treat Summit League basketball like a religion. Bison athletics carries a football-fueled swagger, and the basketball program has borrowed every ounce of it. When the building is full and the Bison are rolling, it's one of the toughest road environments in the mid-major world.
Saul Phillips built the foundation, and David Richman kept it rolling — and then raised it. Through every era, the formula hasn't changed: recruit overlooked toughness, develop it relentlessly, defend, rebound, and win the games that decide seasons. The Bison's way is the mid-major gold standard, and the rest of the Summit keeps trying to copy it.
The 2026-27 season brings the burden of the crown: defending regular-season and tournament champions, a target on every back, and a fan base that now measures seasons in banners. But this program has been the Summit's measuring stick for a decade — the team everyone circles and nobody wants to face when the season's on the line. The Bison standard is simple, and it's written on the wall in Fargo: defend, rebound, win in March.
What defines North Dakota State is the March fearlessness. Woodside's 37, Alexander's buzzer-beater, a school-record 27 wins, and a coach signed through 2031. In Fargo, the expectation isn't the tournament — it's the second weekend. And lately, that expectation keeps looking reasonable.
The individual milestones keep stacking up alongside the team ones. David Richman enters the 2026-27 season seven wins shy of tying Erv Inniger’s school record of 244 victories — a mark that stood for more than three decades and now looks like a formality. When Richman passes it, likely early in the season, it will be the fitting coronation of a tenure that began with a Coach of the Year award in 2015 and may end as the greatest coaching run in school history. The Bison have played in nine of the past twelve Summit League tournament championship games; the next one would only extend an era.