THIS WEEK: North Dakota State's softball game with Iowa State scheduled for Friday, April 16, has been canceled. The Bison (12-20) and Cyclones (23-16) will still play two games this weekend starting at noon Saturday, April 17, and noon Sunday, April 18, at Tharaldson Park in Fargo. Live stats will be available on BisonStats.com. Live video will be available to NDSU All Access subscribers on GoBison.com and the NDSU Athletics mobile app. Bison 1660 and 92.7 FM will have live coverage of Sunday's game with Keith Brake on the call.
 
TICKETS & PARKING: All seating is general admission and tickets may be purchased at the gate on game day. Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for youth ages 3-17. Parking is available in NDSU parking lot NQ to the north of Tharaldson Park on 17th Avenue. Attendees are strongly encouraged to wear masks.
 
THE SERIES: These will be the 11th and 12th meetings between North Dakota State and Iowa State. The Cyclones have a 7-3 lead in the all-time series dating back to 1978 including a 6-3 mark as Division I opponents since 2005. The teams have not played since a 2016 doubleheader in Ames where the Bison won the opener 4-1 before losing 7-2. This is Iowa State's second trip to Fargo. The Cyclones played in NDSU's 2008 home tournament in the Fargodome. ISU beat NDSU 4-2 in eight innings, but the Bison were 3-1 winners over ISU in the final game of the tournament.
 
ABOUT IOWA STATE: The Cyclones have lost eight straight and are 23-16 overall after dropping a pair of non-conference games to Drake 7-6 on Tuesday and Northern Iowa 10-2 on Wednesday. ISU is hitting .299 as a team led by Sami Williams, who is 24th nationally with a .457 batting average, eighth in the country with 15 home runs and sixth nationally with 44 RBIs. Williams also has 12 doubles and two triples and ranks 13th nationally with a .930 slugging percentage while leading the country with 120 total bases. Karlie Charles leads the Cyclones pitching staff with a 10-7 record and 3.65 ERA in 14 starts and has 62 strikeouts with only 27 walks in 99.2 innings pitched. Head coach Jamie Pinkerton has a 94-87 record in his fourth year at Iowa State and is 444-456 in his 16th season overall including previous head coaching jobs at Tulsa (2001-04), Arkansas (2005-09) and Montana (2014-17).
 
LAST WEEK: North Dakota State is 12-20 overall and won 3 of 4 games at home last weekend against South Dakota to move into second place in The Summit League with a 7-5 record. Sam Koehn drilled a walk-off, two-run double to give NDSU a 6-5 win in the series opener and Summit League Pitcher of the Week Lainey Lyle pitched her first collegiate no-hitter with seven strikeouts in a 3-0 win in Saturday's second game. NDSU starter Paige Vargas got a complete-game 3-1 win in Game 3 of the series Sunday behind a pair of home runs from Dez Cardenas and Montana DeCamp before USD jumped out to an early 3-0 lead and won the series finale 6-5.
 
SORIANO HITTING STREAK: OF Stephanie Soriano enters the weekend on a 12-game hitting streak and ranks second in The Summit League with a .404 batting average, 96 points higher than her previous career-best .308 as a junior in 2019. Soriano has reached base in 17 straight contests and has 30 hits over that span to raise her batting average to .404 from .216 entering the Jayhawk Invitational on March 19. She has nine multi-hit games over the past three weekends of league play and had a career-high four RBIs twice against Kansas and Western Illinois.
 
BISON BATS HEATING UP IN LEAGUE PLAY: North Dakota State has a .340 team batting average in Summit League play through 12 games. NDSU has the top two hitters in league play in OF Stephanie Soriano (.548) and OF Madyson Camacho (.481) while OF Emilee Buringa (.440) is fifth and INF Montana DeCamp (.439) is sixth in batting average. Soriano has a league-best 23 hits and DeCamp is tied for the league lead with five doubles along with a league-high four sac bunts.
 
STATISTICAL LEADERS: In the overall stats, OF Stephanie Soriano leads the Bison with a .404 batting average, 38 hits, eight doubles and is tied with INF Montana DeCamp for the team lead with 14 runs scored. OF Madyson Camacho is hitting .352 with a team-high seven stolen bases. C Avery Wysong (.276) has a team-best .526 slugging percentage and four home runs. RHP Paige Vargas leads the Bison pitching staff with seven wins, 13 complete games, 70.1 innings and 48 strikeouts.
 
STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE: North Dakota State continues to play the The Summit League's toughest non-conference schedule in preparation for league play. NDSU's non-conference strength of schedule ranks 53rd and is the only Top 100 schedule in The Summit League. Eight of NDSU's 12 non-conference opponents are in the Top 100 of the current NCAA RPI rankings. South Dakota State (33) leads The Summit League in RPI followed by Kansas City (91) and North Dakota State (181).
 
FOUR-GAME SERIES: With reductions and cancellations in non-conference play this year, The Summit League has expanded its league schedule to four-game series with opponents playing two doubleheaders each weekend. The previous league format was a three-game series with one doubleheader and one single game. Since beginning Summit League play in 2008, NDSU has swept 39 three-game series including 26 away from Fargo. The Bison have been swept only twice in league play with both coming on the road against Purdue Fort Wayne (2010) and Kansas City (2011).
 
BISON PICKED TO WIN SUMMIT: North Dakota State was picked to win The Summit League in a preseason poll of the league's seven head coaches. The Bison have won the last two regular season crowns and six straight league tournament titles. NDSU had six first-place votes followed by South Dakota State, South Dakota, Omaha, Kansas City, North Dakota and Western Illinois.
 
WHO'S BACK: North Dakota State returns 17 of 18 players from last year's COVID-19 shortened season. The Bison lost their last five games of the season to finish 7-16 overall. The Bison had the top fielding team in The Summit League last year with a .965 fielding percentage, a league-low 23 errors and league-high 12 double plays. NDSU hit .257 as a team and had a 4.12 team ERA through 23 games. Designated player Cara Beatty was second in the league with a .393 batting average.
 
FIELD OF THE YEAR: Tharaldson Park, the on-campus home softball stadium for North Dakota State, was named the NCAA Division I winner of the 2020 Netting Professionals NFCA Field of the Year award, which recognizes the top fields/stadiums in the nation for their flawless grounds maintenance and exceptional playing surfaces. Tharaldson Park was dedicated in 2018 after a $2 million renovation including installation of a FieldTurf playing surface and seating for 735 spectators.
 
SUMMIT TOURNEY RETURNS TO FARGO: The Summit League Softball Championship presented by U.S. Air Force Special Warfare is slated to return to Fargo for the ninth time in program history. NDSU will host the league championship May 12-15 at Tharaldson Park. The winner of the six-team tournament will earn the league's automatic qualifier for an NCAA Division I regional.
 
NCAA TOURNAMENT HISTORY: North Dakota State has advanced to NCAA regional play 10 of the past 11 seasons as the Summit League tournament champion. NDSU qualified for its first NCAA Division I tournament in 2009, the school's first year of Division I postseason eligibility, and the Bison swept through the Norman Regional that year to advance to Super Regional play at Arizona State. NDSU made seven NCAA Division II postseason appearances from 1998-2004 including a national championship in 2000.
 
NATIONALLY RANKED OPPONENTS: North Dakota State beat at least one nationally ranked opponent in seven straight seasons from 2012 to 2018 with the most recent Top 25 victory coming in 2018 over 10th-ranked LSU by a 1-0 score in nine innings. That is one of five Bison wins over Top 10 opponents including a 2-1 victory at No. 2 Alabama in 2016, the highest-ranked opponent NDSU has beaten. NDSU's first win over a nationally ranked Division I program came in 2009 with an 11-inning 1-0 victory at No. 9/10 Oklahoma en route to the NCAA regional championship.
 
EXTRA INNINGS: North Dakota State has played five extra-inning games this season with a 3-2 record in those contests. NDSU is 12-4 in extra innings since 2017 and the Bison have a 40-30 record since beginning Division I play in 2005 including three 12-inning games against Colorado State in 2006 (W, 3-2); Kansas City in 2012 (L, 4-6) and Georgia Tech in 2017 (W, 8-6).
 
NO-HITTERS: North Dakota State pitchers have thrown 31 no-hitters including 14 against Division I opponents with Lainey Lyle's April 10 no-no being the first since 2019 when KK Leddy blanked South Dakota State 5-0. There have been eight perfect games by NDSU pitchers with the last one in 2015 by Krista Menke at Purdue Fort Wayne. There have been six no-hitters pitched against NDSU in Division I play since 2005. Illinois State's Morgan Day struck out 16 and walked one in the last no-hitter against North Dakota State in the championship game of the Middle Tennessee State University Invitational on March 14.