Ben Woodside let his steely gaze relax for a second, and a sly smile crept across his face. His North Dakota State Bison, in this fifth and most special season, have officially stepped onto the national stage.

They’re about to play the defending NCAA champions at a major league stadium just a four-hour drive from their campus on the prairie, and people all over the country who couldn’t tell Bismarck from Fargo will be taking long lunches and logging onto their laptops to watch.

“It’s kind of the one team they have in the state. There are no pro teams or anything like that,” said center Lucas Moormann, one of the five seniors who redshirted as freshmen in 2004-05 while North Dakota State made the move up from Division II for the chance to do this.

“This is the one team they are always watching.”

The No. 14 seed in the Midwest Region, the Bison (26-6) face a bigger and presumably better Kansas team in the first round at the Metrodome on Friday. After being ineligible for the NCAA tournament the last four years, though, they could have been paired with the Boston Celtics and probably wouldn’t have minded.

“We’ve had a great time with it to this point,” coach Saul Phillips said, “and we just want to keep playing games.”

In their first season in the Summit League, the Bison came back from a double-digit deficit to beat Oakland in the conference championship and qualify for the famous field of 65.

“After that Oakland game we saw ourselves on ESPN,” Woodside said. “And most high majors, you know, they probably turn the channel because they see themselves so many times. I think myself and our teammates, we watched it a couple of extra times just to get a good look at it.”

They’ve had a good look at Kansas, too, starting with last year’s title game.

Point guard Sherron Collins and center Cole Aldrich are the only players still around who contributed for the Jayhawks last season, but coach Bill Self has guided his team back to prominence despite the rampant inexperience on his roster.

“I’m not sure our team could have been in the situations that it was in last year and been successful if they hadn’t been through the wars before. We know that,” Self said. “But also I do think we play a pretty difficult schedule, and it’s a pretty good league.”

Despite an eyebrow-raising defeat to Baylor in their first Big 12 tournament game and a 19-point loss at Texas Tech the week before that, the Jayhawks (25-7) were regular season champions. Their last five games include victories at Oklahoma and at home against Missouri and Texas, after losing all five starters from last year’s title-winning team.