KALAMAZOO, Mich. – The Western Michigan men's basketball team opened up the 2023-24 season with an 80-76 overtime loss to North Dakota State on Monday night at University Arena.
 
B. Artis White paced the Broncos (0-1) offensively with 20 points, while Seth Hubbard picked up where he left off at the end of his freshman season, adding 16 points off of the bench. Markhi Strickland chipped in nine points in his Western Michigan debut. Titus Wright corralled a team-high 11 rebounds to surpass 500 in his WMU career.
 
Western Michigan got out to a fast start, scoring the first 10 points of the game in the opening three minutes. The Bison got as close as three, 15-12, in the first half, but WMU got an old-fashioned three-point play from Strickland and a triple from White to up the margin to 38-26 with just under two minutes to play in the period. The Broncos took a 38-28 advantage into the halftime locker room.
 
The Brown and Gold quickly got the margin back to 12 in the early stages of the second half, but North Dakota State scored seven in a row to climb to within five, 42-37, at the 15:48 mark. With the margin again at five, 57-52, the Bison used an 8-2 spurt to grab their first lead of the night, 60-59, with 6:17 to play.
 
With 3:40 to go in regulation, Jefferson De La Cruz Monegro buried a three-pointer which put the Broncos back on top, 64-63. The next six went to the Bison, giving the visitors a 69-64 edge with 2:20 to play. Hubbard responded with three-pointers on back-to-back possessions to put the Brown and Gold back in front, 70-69, with just over a minute remaining. Western Michigan added a free throw with nine seconds to go to make it 71-69, but a put-back attempt by NDSU just beat the final horn, sending the contest into overtime knotted at 71-71.
 
Neither team scored for the first two minutes of overtime, with Anthony Crump breaking the deadlock with a layup to put the Broncos in front, 73-71. North Dakota State notched the next eight points to grab a 79-73 lead. WMU got a three-pointer in the final seconds to shrink the margin back to three, but NDSU sealed the game from the free throw line.
 
The Broncos connected on 29-of-68 (42.6 percent) from the field for the evening and hit 12-of-29 (41.4 percent) from beyond the arc. The WMU defense held North Dakota State to 38.6 percent (27-of-70) from the floor and forced the Bison into 17 turnovers.
 
Western Michigan continues its season-opening homestand on Saturday afternoon as it welcomes Georgia State to University Arena for the first game of the MAC-Sun Belt Challenge. Tip between the Broncos and the Panthers is set for 1 pm. Tickets for all WMU men's basketball home games are available at wmubroncos.com/tickets.