REACHING
BEYOND
THE
SUMMIT
By Joe Kerlin
W
hen Taylor Braun, Mike Felt and Jordan
Aaberg arrived at NDSU, the basketball
program had just made history. The 2009
basketball team was the first Bison team to reach
the NCAA tournament and were an impossible act
to follow, especially with four of the five starters
graduating. Suddenly, the Bison were young and
in the middle of an identity crisis. Five years later,
their identity was found and the green and gold
became recognizable to any college basketball
fan across the nation. This isn’t just a story about
a basketball team that found reasonable success
within the Midwest. This is a story about a group
of young men, bonded together by one goal and
one dream — making the NCAA tournament.
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