NDSU at Augustana College – October 8, 2006

NDSU dropped their second straight game in extremely frustrating fashion on a chilly, rainy Sunday morning in Sioux Falls. The Bison arrived to find an incredibly bumpy, short, uneven soccer field that was in poor condition to say the least. In fact, the referees temporarily stopped the game in the 15th minute to fill holes in the field with dirt. The Bison had an extremely tough time getting used to the field, which was also slippery due to the rain. But of course both teams had to play on the same field, and Augustana seemed to adjust the conditions better early on. The Vikings used their height to win nearly everything in the air with very little resistance from the Bison players, earning a lot of scoring opportunities and corner kicks. However, the Bison finally settled down and were able to connect a few passes here and there. In the 18th minute, Selam Ahmed got in behind the Augustana defense and was summarily pummeled to the ground by two defenders in the box resulting in a penalty kick. Bob Smith put away his second penalty kick goal of the year to give NDSU the lead. The rest of the first half was back-and-forth, as neither team could mount many chances. But Augustana was still winning nearly every ball in the air, and the overall level of play for the Bison was unfortunately pretty low for most of the game. In the 39th minute, an open Augustana player took a hard shot near the top of the box that went just under NDSU keeper Zach Schneider’s glove to tie the game at 1-1. The teams went into halftime at the same score.

The Bison struggled in the first half, but they probably played even worse in the closing 45 minutes. They were still getting dominated in the air, and Augustana simply seemed to want the game more than NDSU. The Bison tried hard to get scoring chances, but they just couldn’t find their touch. When NDSU was able to get a shot off, they were usually way off the mark—they posted a season-low four shots on goal for the entire game. In the 67th minute, Augustana took advantage of blown coverage in the back by the Bison and a Viking forward broke in free on net. Schneider came off his line and dove out to his left, but the forward poked the ball the other way and Schneider could only watch as the ball rolled into the net. The Bison did everything they could to tie the game in the last 20 minutes, but it just wasn’t their day. Everything that could have gone wrong for NDSU seemed to go wrong, and Augustana escaped with the 2-1 victory. The exasperating loss dropped NDSU’s record to 8-3-1 (6-3-1 in the conference) while Augustana improved to 4-5-2.