Summit League tournament: Jackrabbit women steamrolling into Sioux Falls
· Yahoo Sports
Mar. 4—SIOUX FALLS — South Dakota State's 67-game Summit League winning streak ended in January with a home loss to North Dakota State.
Two weeks later, the Jackrabbits were beaten by South Dakota, and over the next month the Bison remained undefeated in conference play, running their winning streak to 23 games.
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It looked like there might be a changing of the guard underway, for one year at least.
Then in the final week of the season, the Jackrabbits went into Fargo and beat the Bison by 15 and three days later beat USD by 33.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
NDSU is in the midst of the best season in that program's Division I era, and at 26-3 and 15-1 in league play they earned the regular season conference title and the No. 1 seed in the Summit League tournament.
But by closing the regular season with seven straight convincing wins, the 2nd-seeded Jackrabbits reminded everyone that this tournament still goes through the team wearing blue and yellow.
SDSU (24-6, 14-2) has won the last three Summit League tournaments and 12 of the 17 that have been held in Sioux Falls.
This may finally be the Bison's year. Or maybe the 3rd-seeded Coyotes are ready to spring an upset. But nobody is coming in hotter, or, likely, more confident, than the Jacks.
"I feel like we definitely have some momentum going," said Jacks senior center and conference scoring champion Brooklyn Meyer. "I feel like winning two tough games (against) teams that have beat us before, gives us good confidence and gives us good momentum going into (the tournament). I feel like as long as we just stay together and stay focused it will be good for us."
It's obvious Jacks coach Aaron Johnston took those two losses to heart. He made adjustments to the lineup and to his offensive and defensive gameplans, and also challenged his players to find a higher level of play. Johnston never accused his players of taking their success for granted but did use the two league losses to show them this year's path to another NCAA tournament will be more difficult than the last few. The Bison are legit. The Coyotes are legit. And these players haven't had to deal with that until this year.
They open the conference tournament against 7th-seeded Kansas City, whom they swept in the regular season, and barring upsets, would face USD in the semifinals and, should they win that, NDSU in the championship.
"I'm really proud of how we've played in the month of February," Johnston said. "I think our team has done some good things, improved in a lot of ways, and now we turn that page and get ready for a whole new environment, a whole new event, a whole new pressure, and a whole new thing. So it's just a matter of kind of refocusing now, trying to get ready to play really good basketball and get a good plan for Kansas City."
Certainly, Meyer makes the Jacks hard to bet against. She's winding down one of the best careers in Summit League history, entering the tournament averaging 22.1 points, 7.9 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.9 blocks per game while shooting a league-best .653 from the floor. She's been virtually unstoppable.
And while there were times earlier in the season when Meyer was perhaps being forced to carry too heavy a load, her teammates have stepped up during this winning streak. Senior guard Madison Mathiowetz (13.4 points per game) has been steady, Emilee Fox leads the league in 3-point shooting (50 percent), freshman Brooklyn Felchle has given the Jacks another strong post presence, Hadley Thul has been solid since moving into the starting lineup and freshman point guard Mahli Abdouch seems to get better with each game.
Then there's the environment. The Premier Center will be packed with SDSU fans when the Jacks play, and Johnston clearly knows which buttons to push to get his team to play to that homecourt advantage.
There's no magic formula for their Sioux Falls success, Johnston says. His team just takes a business-like, clear-eyed approach. And it works.
"If you win, you'll play on. If you lose, you'll be done. I think it's okay to talk about that because that's the reality of it," Johnston said. "That's life. There's things like that. If you do well in this project or interview or whatever, you've got a chance to be happy, and if you don't, it probably won't go so well.
"We try and normalize it, I think, and get them thinking about it. And then when you normalize it, then you can just put all your focus in trying to be the best. Now you're not worried about the outcome. You know one of two things is going to happen in a basketball game, and you can just focus on trying to make the right plays to get the outcome that you want."