ÍáÍáÂþ»­

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — It wasn't always pretty, but it wasn't a debacle. For North Dakota State's women's basketball program, that's a win worth talking about.

"It was kind of an ugly game," Bison senior guard Heaven Hamling said. "But we fought through it."

The Bison beat Denver 72-60 in the quarterfinals of the Summit League tournament on Saturday afternoon, with curious South Dakota State fans making up most of the crowd at the quarter-filled Denny Sanford Premier Center.

Oh, and the University of North Dakota's women's team was there, too, openly cheering for Denver. Bison coach Jory Collins did not call a timeout with 5 seconds left in retribution.

The victory was the 20th of the season for NDSU, the first time the program has reached that milestone since playing a full NCAA Division I schedule. That's a positive. The victory was just the fourth for the Bison in the conference tournament — ever. That's a positive. The Bison are in the tourney semifinals for the second time — ever. That's a positive.

Richard Carlson/Inertia

But the biggest positive is that the Bison went debacle-free as the No. 2 seed.

It was a year ago when NDSU came to Sioux Falls as the Summit League's second-best team and dropped an egg the size of South Dakota. Deer-in-headlights stuff. The Bison fell behind 41-29 by halftime and lost to seventh-seeded Kansas City 71-64. High expectations met reality. NDSU looked slow, unathletic and hesitant against the Roos.

There was none of that this go-around. Collins, in fact, said last year never came up.

"We were the team that got upset last year and a lot of people asked me about that. We didn't talk about last year for one second in the last week. There just was nothing to talk about," Collins said. "That was a different team, a different time. This is a different group with a different mentality. They are a confident group. I think they believe in each other quite a bit and expected to come out and play well today."

Indeed, past deeds had little to do with what transpired Saturday. Collins plays four true freshmen and a redshirt freshman. They had nothing to do with what happened last year.

Richard Carlson/Inertia

"It wasn't the greatest last year," Hamling said, "but I don't think we talked about it at all. We're a really young team, a lot of new players. The freshmen maybe watched it, but they weren't really involved with it. So we just came in today and played with our hearts and played like we know how to play."

Hamling was terrific with 25 points and 8 rebounds and the wonderful Elle Evans had 17 and 7, but Denver was insistent on taking away NDSU's 3-point arsenal. The Bison went just 5 of 14 from deep, far below their averages (8 of 20). That helped Abbie Draper get 16 points and 7 rebounds as she dominated the paint, especially in the first half.

There were warts. Denver "muddied it up," in Collins' words, in the second and third quarters and NDSU could never quite put the game out of reach. The Bison led by 13 in the opening moments of the second half, but turnovers and a stagnant offense allowed the Pioneers to pull within 50-46 with 4:35 left in the third quarter.

Was a repeat of last year in the offing?

No. NDSU outscored Denver 10-3 the rest of the quarter for a more-comfortable 60-49 lead. The Bison held off a couple of mini-runs in the fourth.

Dave Eggen/Inertia

"They wanted to get us to play out-of-system and try to make scramble plays," Collins said. "We made some, missed on others. Got the ball in bad spots in others. When it got to four, I thought we settled in and responded with a pretty good run."

The concern was with how NDSU handled the press. The Bison don't have a true quick, ball-handling point guard to break down a defense. NDSU is lengthy, but not particularly athletic. It shows up on the defensive end, too.

This is NDSU's best team of the Division I era, but there are still nits to pick. They're not going to get past the Jackrabbits — or maybe even through the semifinals — with a dodgy performance.

The age-old adage applies. A win is a win is a win.

Which is always better than a debacle.

"I think they believe in each other, they believe in each other's ability. I think they believe in each other as teammates. I think they believe when things aren't going our way that we're going to be the team that's going to get it fixed faster and more efficiently. They've shown the ability to do that in a lot of tough games," Collins said. "I'll go back to November and December when we played four or five teams that are going to be in the NCAA tournament either on the road or at neutral sites. We learned a lot about ourselves that way. I think they learned that we can believe in each other. As we went on, we were going to get better and better."

Dave Eggen/Inertia

A berth in the championship game, which would be a first for the Bison, is one victory away.

"My goal every year has been to get to the title game and win the championship," Hamling said. "I'm sure that was the goal of a lot of us, so we have to go ahead Monday and play the same way we played today — or probably a little better — and hopefully we'll be in that championship game on Tuesday."