North Dakota State football’s incredible 39-game win streak is officially over. The Bison are the three-time reigning FCS national champions — they’ve also won eight of the last nine titles for an FCS record total — and their last loss was to South Dakota State on November 4, 2017.

Well, up until Saturday.

On the road against Southern Illinois for its second game of the 2021 spring season, North Dakota State — which is playing without quarterback Trey Lance, who declared for the NFL Draft in October — struggled to keep up with the Salukis. The Bison fell into a 17-0 hole toward the end of the second quarter, but it managed to get a late-half touchdown in to trail by 10 going into halftime.

Unfortunately for the Bison and their outrageous win streak, the second half was tougher than the first with Southern Illinois running away with a 38-14 victory to hand North Dakota State its first loss in more than three years.

The Salukis had the ball for about 23 more minutes than the Bison and finished with 443 total yards compared with North Dakota’s 268 yards.

North Dakota State’s 39-game win streak was the third-longest in Division I history and the longest in the FCS. It broke its own previous FCS record of 33 consecutive wins between 2012 and 2014. The Bison needed just one more W to tie Washington’s record from 1908 to 1914, but Southern Illinois shut that down with a dominant victory.

After so many straight wins, a loss for the Bison is truly unbelievable.