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second trip to the NCAA tournament.
• "Honestly, I thought I was going to the free throw line -- threw it up and it somehow went in," Braun said.
• TrayVonn Wright led North Dakota State (25-6) with 19 points on a mixture of dunks, layups and jumpers, and Braun added 15 points.
• Marshall Bjorklund, the nation's most accurate shooter from the field at 63.7 percent, contributed with 12 points, but fouled out with about 2 minutes left in the game.
• Coach Saul Phillips said Wright kept the Bison in the game for most of the 40 minutes and Braun stepped up to finish it.
• IPFW (24-10) stuck with its balanced approach, with Pierre Bland, Luis Jacobo and Michael Kibiloski each scoring nine points for the Mastodons, who were playing in their first Summit League title game.
• Mastodon coach Tony Jasick said the game was a tough defensive matchup, and it's hard to get clean looks against the Bison.
• "I thought we had a lot of balls on the rim that just didn't fall for us tonight," he said.
• North Dakota State entered the game atop the Division I field goal shooting at 51.3 percent but shot just 40.7 percent from the field in the game, including 5 of 16 from beyond the arc.
• Wright said the team needed more patience in using ball fakes and they rushed too many shots.
• "We were impatient," Wright said. "We wanted to win right now. We didn't want to wait."
• Phillips agreed.
• "My message was, 'You've still got time here guys,'" he said.
• The Bison, which trailed for most of the first half, began to make a move with about five minutes in the period when Wright dunked an alley-oop from Kory Brown for two and then hustled down court for a block on Steve Forbes, a turnover that led to another two.
• But IPFW fought back to hold a 35-30 lead at halftime.
• The Bison took the lead a handful of times in the second half, but neither team could pad its lead.
• The crowd of 4,263 at the Sioux Falls Arena was primarily pulling for North Dakota State, which sits about 240 miles due north of Sioux Falls in Fargo, N.D.
• The Bison earned a berth to the NCAA tournament in 2009 during its first year of Division I postseason eligibility, but lost in the opening round to Kansas 84-74. Phillips said he's excited to take this team to the NCAA tournament.
• "It's going to be a blast," he said. "It's going to be an absolute thrill ride for our

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