For the fifth year in a row, SDSU’s defensive unit showed off its winning ways in the annual spring game, causing three interceptions and five sacks to beat the offense, 42-32, on a windy Saturday afternoon.

Those conditions prevented too many big plays for the Jackrabbits offense, something that SDSU head coach John Stiegelmeier said he was not too worried about.

“You’re always going to win [the spring game] with a great defense. It’s hard to measure great defense when you’re playing against yourself and you want to be great on offense. Not a lot of long drives, no big plays, those really are positives when you look at it as a football program,” he said.

The Jackrabbits scored on their opening possession using a short field to score in six plays from 30 yards. SDSU set up first and goal but couldn’t score on the first three downs, converting when starting quarterback Austin Sumner launched a lob to the corner of the end zone where Jason Schneider hauled in the one-yard pass for the touchdown.

From there, the defense carried the way with R.C. Kilgore intercepting a pass from Eric Kline off a deflection for the day’s first turnover, worth six points with the adjusted scoring in the spring game. David Godley stole a Sumner pass from the arms of receiver Aaron Rollin on the first half’s final play. Junior college-transfer Austin Scott-Knowlton intercepted third-string quarterback Tyler Finnes in the second half. The front seven also picked up four sacks in the second half to keep the offense off balance and Bo Helm led the squad with seven tackles.

Nevertheless, it was a success in the first half for the offense, a unit that only trailed by two at halftime, 18-16 — a far cry from the year prior when the defense notched a 50-point win.

“I thought the first half was better. I thought there was some sloppy play in the second half and just turnovers and bobbling the ball. There’s a tendency to fall off as the game goes along and I think that’s what happened today,” Stiegelmeier said.

The offense picked up their second touchdown of the game when redshirt freshman Reggie Gandy lost the ball at the one-yard line and offensive lineman Dylan Seiter recovered it in the end zone, a rarity in a football game regardless of season.

The special teams, hampered by the strong winds, were hit and miss throughout the day. Both Jason Syrovatka and Jay Carlson missed cracks at 23-yard field goals in the first half. Syrovatka later made a 44-yard field goal, but the kickoffs and punts were sporadic in length and accuracy.

Sumner finished the game with 11-of-22 passes completed for 104 yards, a touchdown and an interception. Kline was 6-of-10 for 55 yards in the game. Gandy, appearing in his first spring game for the Jacks, led the rushing game with 15 carries for 61 yards.

“[The game] was a lot closer than it was last year and we were getting a little nervous,” defensive lineman Chase Douglas said. “It’s huge for the defense to win. There’s a lot of talking on both sides.”

For both sides, it still stands as a good way to wrap up the 15 practices this time of year.

“Credit to all of the defense, they came out and stepped up. We played hard and executed well and I think that it’s a good way to end the spring,” said linebacker Chris Tracy.

Brookings has built itself up as a hockey town and now they have the team to show it off.

On April 23, the city of Brookings, the Blizzard Hockey Organization and the Brookings Ice Skating Association announced that they have reached a three-year deal to bring Tier II junior hockey to the city. The team, which will be called the Brookings Blizzard, will begin North American Hockey League play in September 2012 and will play at Larson Ice Arena, coming to Brookings after nine years in Alexandria, Minn.

The NAHL is Tier II in the ranks of junior hockey in the U.S. Tier I includes the United States Hockey League, which includes the Sioux Falls Stampede. A lower-level Tier III team will replace the Blizzard in Alexandria. Players ages 16-20 from around the nation and around the world join the league and take high school classes on the road. The season starts when players arrive around Labor Day and the 23-27 players, who stay with host families, will stay until at least April. The slate is 60 games long and there will be 28 home games in Brookings. Conversations started in July about bringing a team to Brookings with both the city and ownership courting each other for a while.

“We think junior hockey can come to this town and survive in this town long-term,” Blizzard co-owner Chris Canavati said, who owns the franchise with his brother Mitri. “We know that teams come and go and we’ve taken the time to study the Brookings market and make sure that it will work long-term. We don’t ever want to leave.”

Canavati said that teams in Sioux Falls and Aberdeen have shown that junior hockey in South Dakota can work and Brookings’ population and community support are the main reasons why they have confidence. In addition to Aberdeen, other Midwest teams include Austin, Minn., Bismarck and Minot, N.D. The five teams will play in the Central Division of the league and the Blizzard have had success in recent years. At Alexandria in 2011-12, the Blizzard finished with 40 wins, 15 losses and five overtime losses (like the NHL, there’s no ties; the games go straight to a shoot). With 85 points, they are seven behind division champion Bismarck.

The team said that they will start to market themselves more aggressively soon and will likely work on adding areas for parties and groups to take in the action. Brookings City Manager Jeff Wheldon confirmed that alcohol will be sold during Blizzard games and that it will likely be confined to a portion of the 2,000-seat arena, with consumption limited to one side of the arena. Canavati said that alcohol is only a part of the experience and the team is not going to market around that aspect. That said, he wants to make a point of reaching a unique fanbase of SDSU students, who  have supported the school’s two club teams over the years. He said that the franchise would be open to partnerships and hands-on experience for students at the school.

“We think that South Dakota State is very important to our success. It’s a high level of hockey and we think that the entertainment value is excellent,” Canavati said. “The university will also open up some new opportunities for us and will allow our players to take classes from the university, which we couldn’t do before.”

The Blizzard’s head coach is Doc DelCastillo, who is entering his fourth season coaching the franchise. He has coached Division I hockey as an assistant at St. Cloud State and at Nebraska-Omaha. DelCastillo says that fans will be impressed with the level of hockey that is played, where most of the players will play some sort of college hockey, either at Division I or Division III.

“It’s an entertaining brand of hockey. We’ll get up and down the ice and we’ll play physical. This is going to be a tough ticket to get. Once we start playing, it’s going to be tough to get in here and I would tell [the fans] to get season tickets to make sure they have a seat,” DelCastillo said.

Ticket prices have not been set but Canavati said that they would be similar to others in the league, which would put them in the $10 range. Despite the crowded nature of the arena and adding another tenant, the city recognizes the importance of the highly-popular SDSU club hockey teams.

“They’ll continue to be an important partner with us,” Weldon said of the Jacks’ teams. “Getting college activity from the campus [to attend Blizzard games] will help their interests and ultimately help all of the ventures at the arena.”

After defeating NAIA Mount Marty by a score of 3-1 on April 10, SDSU head baseball coach Dave Schrage said that three runs would not be enough to defeat Minnesota, who would be the Jackrabbits’ opponent the next day.

He had his proof. The Gophers throttled SDSU with the bats for a season-high 16 hits in a 9-3 win at the Metrodome 14 days prior.

The coach doesn’t mind being wrong, though.

For the second consecutive day, this time against a considerably better opponent, the Jackrabbits rode stellar defense and a very good pitching performance to beat Minnesota, 3-1, in front of 258 fans at Erv Huether Field April 11.

“It was probably overall the best game we’ve played. I thought we made some great plays defensively and on a Wednesday, to get that kind of pitching performance from five or six guys says a lot about where our staff is at,” Schrage said.

First baseman Aaron Machbitz drilled the eventual game-winning two-run home run to center field in the sixth inning to break a 1-1 tie. Machbitz, the big Texan manning the cleanup spot for the Jacks, said he felt like he was due to go deep once again for his second homer of the season.

“Since the very beginning of the season, I’ve felt like I’ve had chances. I haven’t hit many and I guess I just got a pitch to hit,” Machbitz said.

The Jackrabbits didn’t strike the hit column until the fourth inning and the man to do it, Phil Paquette, came around to score when Zach Rhodes put SDSU out in front, 1-0, with a single to right field. Minnesota answered in the top of the next frame when David Bettenburg led off the inning with a walk and came around to score two batters later with a groundout from Andy Henkemeyer that evened the score at 1-1 at the game’s halfway point.

The Jacks (10-17-1) had six pitchers team up to hold the Golden Gophers (17-17) to five hits. As both teams tried to conserve energy for the more important upcoming conference series, the pitching changes were frequent and 11 different pitchers were used in all.

Shane Kraemer and Nick Young each pitched two innings after Layne Somsen’s scoreless first inning, in which Somesen had three strikeouts. Blake Fiedelman’s spotless sixth inning earned him his first win as a Jackrabbit and after two innings from Marcus Heemstra, Deon Enringer notched his first save of the 2012 campaign with three fly ball outs in the ninth inning, keeping SDSU’s home record against Minnesota perfect since moving to Division I.

The Jackrabbits saw catcher Zach Briggs throw out a pair of runners on the bases from his perch behind home plate, including one on a throw down to second base to catch Ryan Abrahamson off second base and end the Minnesota fifth. SDSU had exemplary defense from Andrew Phelan — filling in at second base for the injured Andrew Melton — when he started a spectacular double play with only his glove for the flip to Eric Cain at the bag and on to Machbitz at first. The end of eighth and the beginning of the ninth inning for Minnesota were both marked by terrific diving catches by Rhodes and Eric Danforth in right and left field, respectively.

“It was a good team win. We had fantastic defense and good pitching and it’s good for the team to have everyone come together for the win,” Machbitz said.

For a team that has been trying to turn its season around for a few weeks now, a win against a Big Ten team like Minnesota could be the turning point for the Jackrabbits. They sure hope so.

“It’s always fun when we get a chance against a team like Minnesota,” Briggs said. “We’re always going to be a little bit more geared up for a game like this and to get a chance to compete with one of the powerhouses in the Big Ten amps us up and we brought our A-game today.”

“I think this is the kind of game that can catapult you. To know you can play with a team like this and we [the coaches] have been telling them that. Hopefully, this will get us going in the right direction,” Schrage said.

Layne Somsen sees it that way.

Expectations have always been high for him, what’s more, he set those expectations for himself. And in his own words, he’s failed.

He could blame his elbow for giving way and then failing to cooperate when he wanted to return to action. Somsen won’t do that, and he’s convinced that his best days on the mound are still in front of him.

• • •

It’s the stuff of legend in South Dakota baseball history. Pure, overpowering heat. Velocity that just blew away the best hitters around. In high school, Somsen continually raised the bar even higher, pitch after pitch.

That skill develops over time. He had been prepping to be a pitcher since he was 5-years-old. Even then he took it more seriously than most, developing a competitive nature that is essential for any budding athlete.

“He took a liking to baseball at a pretty young age,” said Dan Somsen, Layne’s dad. “He was just a natural for baseball. He played T-ball at a young age in Yankton and the supervisors said that he should probably move up a grade level because he almost knocked a coach off the mound in T-ball.”

Once in high school, there seemed to be no peak for his ability. He struck out 85 batters in 45 innings as a junior for Yankton and then bettered that with 128 strikeouts in 60 innings as a senior for the Bucks.

He averaged over two strikeouts per inning as a senior. He hit 88 miles-per-hour regularly during his high school career, topping out at 92. Pitching looked easy for Somsen and by his own admission, it was.

“I guess I was pretty good. I threw hard in high school and not many people see that and I guess that gave me the upper hand,” he said.

Somsen was a solid outfielder too but it was his level of pitching that held interest for both the pro scouts and college recruiters. His goal of playing Division I was in reach and with interest from then-head coach Reggie Christiansen, Somsen made the decision to join the Jackrabbits.

Once in Brookings, Somsen and former SDSU pitching coach Jake Angier made the decision to have him focus all of his duties on pitching because that would likely be Somsen’s best career path if he wanted to play professional baseball. Plus, as a pre-physical therapy major, there wouldn’t be time to focus on classes and go to two sets of practices during the offseason.

With his college career focused on pitching, the level of expectation increased with SDSU throwing him into the starting rotation in his first year. Somsen felt that his stuff would still be largely unhittable despite the move to Division I baseball, a notion that he would find to be untrue.

Somsen made a team-high 12 starts as a freshman but that was pretty much the end of the good news. He lost his first seven decisions as a pitcher and finished the season at 4-7, with a 5.32 earned run average in 66 innings. Gone were the days of two strikeouts an inning; Somsen finished the season with 44 walks and 36 strikeouts.

“I was wondering what I was doing wrong and I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was just that the hitters were just that much better,” he said.

He thought it would be easy pitching in college but Somsen realized that the level of the opposition was no longer filled with guys who had no aspirations to play further than South Dakota Legion baseball or high school. This was Division I and most of his opponents weren’t going to spin themselves into the ground against Somsen’s stuff.

“I thought I was going to be able to come in and strike everybody out and that’s not what happened and I had to realize that I’m playing Division I baseball and not South Dakota Legion baseball,” Somsen said.

He spent time nursing a sore arm during the fall of 2009 preparing for his sophomore season and didn’t throw much. It was nothing to be alarmed about for the time being.

• • •

Pop. He heard it but kept going.

On Feb. 27, 2010, Somsen made his first start of the season against Murray State in the Jacks’ second game of the year. He worked through the first inning with little trouble, allowing one hit. The second inning was not normal for Somsen. He heard the sound coming from his elbow but stayed in the game. It didn’t hurt. He kept pitching, getting out of the inning, allowing two runs on one hit and an SDSU error.

But as he was walking to the dugout, the shrill pain set in. His whole right arm was numb from the elbow down to his fingers. Somsen’s day — and season — was done.

“I came out and it just hurt,” he said. “It was just a fastball and I knew it right away.”

For mom Barb and dad Dan, it was hard to only hear about the pain from 800 miles away.

“We decided that we would try to make a couple other road trips because we went to Murray State in 2009. As parents, you feel bad that you’re not there when he was hurt,” Dan said.

An MRI was unclear and Somsen continued to get mixed signals from both his test results and his doctors, who knew that he had an elbow injury but were unclear on the extent of the injury. He tried a few weeks of rehab but his arm only returned to about 70 percent before he decided that he needed to seek a second opinion.

“I knew something was wrong because I was doing all of my rehab twice a day and nothing was changing,” Somsen said.

In May 2010, Somsen went to St. Louis to visit with the medical director and head team physician for the St. Louis Cardinals, George Paletta. After a few simple tests totaling no more than about 10 minutes, Paletta diagnosed Somsen with an 80 percent tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow and recommended him for surgery. A few weeks later, Somsen was under the knife to replace the ligament with tendon from his left wrist.

His elbow and his baseball career would have a long way to go.

• • •

It’s one thing to hear about pitchers coming back from an arm injury. It’s quite another to carry the scar and deal with setbacks.

Somsen struggled when he arrived in college and in a similar sense he wasn’t ready for a setback when he was trying to work his elbow back into shape. The pitcher was almost in a hurry to get back into shape and rejoin the team because he knew how strong of a team SDSU had in 2010.

“I knew we had the big bats and I wanted to get back as fast as I could and I think that was what made my injury prolong. I didn’t let it heal correctly,” Somsen said. “I would feel alright and then my elbow would just inflame.”

Finally, rather than rush him back, the SDSU trainers decided it would be wise to shutdown Somsen for the 2011 campaign too. That meant not picking up a ball for three months and letting his elbow heal, letting go of baseball for the longest time in his career.

Rehab took so much out of Somsen that he had thoughts about quitting baseball when the frustration mounted. His father said that he never verbalized those thoughts at the time but said that his son was, as a competitor, frustrated with his inability to heal and return to the diamond. The younger Somsen credits his teammates for keeping him involved and keeping his spirits up.

“If I didn’t have the teammates that I did have, I probably would’ve hung it up. I credit SDSU’s training staff and they just really helped me out every step of the way,” he said.

• • •

In an almost too perfect twist of fate, Somsen returned to Murray State on Feb. 26, 2012, one day shy of exactly two years from his injury. Again, he made his first start of the season and again he threw two innings. It was a less-than spectacular return; he took the loss. But this time, he left the mound with a solid elbow and feeling well.

For the first time since the injury, Somsen could trust his elbow and his increasingly important confidence level continued to rise.

“I was kind of scared to throw like I used to,” Somsen said of his 2012 start. “I tried to just tweak little things and then I just decided to relax and throw and it all clicked.”

His season so far has been much like his collegiate career: up and down. Somsen is 0-4 in eight appearances, with 35.2 innings worked this season. However, he’s allowed 14 earned runs in those innings. He hit a career-high for strikeouts against Iowa April 14, fanning nine Hawkeyes in Omaha, Neb.

“He’s a great kid and he’s one of our hardest workers,” SDSU head coach Dave Schrage said. “He’s in a spot where when he pitches well, we have trouble scoring runs and when we hit, he doesn’t seem to pitch well. He just needs to break through and hopefully he’ll build off that.”

“After being out for two years, the biggest thing is just going to what is comfortable and I think that has taken some time. He’s getting back into a groove and getting into a rhythm that feels good to him,” SDSU pitching coach Tyler Oakes said.

Now without hesitation, he’s been working on adding a cutter to his pitching repertoire — an idea that cropped up when Somsen was experimenting after surgery and getting a baseball back in his hands.

Somsen said he could get by in high school with just a fastball and a breaking ball but to be successful in Division I, he needed a third pitch.

“I was just sort of fooling around with it and figured that I would give it a shot. The cutter is such a better college pitch because hitters can see a curveball from a mile away,” he said.

“He did it on his own and he came to me. I let him show it off and it has developed into probably his best breaking pitch right now to offset the curve and the fastball,” Oakes said.

Eligibility wise, Somsen is a junior but he’s not sure if he’ll try to get another season at the end of his career, something that’s possible despite taking a medical redshirt in 2010. He wants to go to physical therapy school when he’s done at SDSU and he said he might just start in on that when his career is over.

Of course, professional baseball remains a hope and a dream. His arm is back to throwing 88 on the speed gun, touching 92 like he used to. The same scouts that were watching him before the injury are now watching him again.

“I feel like I can be that dominant again,” Somsen said. “I haven’t pitched the way that I feel I can during college and I have to prove to people that I can do it at this level.”

• • •

Somsen made a start on April 11, against Minnesota at Erv Huether Field and the theme of his career was apparent again. He threw a pitch to the backstop, skidding past catcher Zach Briggs before rolling back toward home plate. In the same inning, Somsen recorded all three outs by strikeout.

Perhaps proof that he’s bouncing back once more.

That might have to change with Chris Bono on campus.

If you were one of the few to go to a wrestling match in the last couple of years, you know that Frost Arena was eerily quiet and empty. You knew that good wrestling teams were going to come in and they were going to take care of the Jacks with ease and you were going to be home in an hour.

Frankly, it was boring. There’s nothing boring about Bono.

The man exudes energy and that was apparent even over the phone in my conversation with him Tuesday, when he was officially announced as the hire.

SDSU’s new wrestling coach has made an impact early in his career and he arrives to a program that desperately needs a kick start. A former national champion at Iowa State, Bono coached at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, where he enhanced an already rich wrestling history with three more Southern Conference championships in as many seasons and a record of 39-17. In three quick seasons at Chattanooga, Bono sent 19 wrestlers to the NCAA Tournament. SDSU has sent three wrestlers since 2007.

You don’t have to convince Bono that there’s Division I quality wrestling talent in South Dakota: he knows. He battled Philip native Lincoln McIlravy numerous times both during his time at Iowa State when McIlravy was at Iowa and in the qualification for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, where Bono was defeated by McIllravy.

Bono called the Midwest a goldmine for high school wrestling and it most certainly is with a high level of talent in the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota. There are plenty of wrestlers in those states who would love to have a shot to wrestle at Division I. SDSU has to be able to convince nearby talent that the Jackrabbits’ program is a legitimate option.

He recognizes that the community, both on-campus and in Brookings, is “starving” for the wrestling team to become great again. I’ve picked up that sense too. People have asked about the wrestling program at SDSU like it was sick, asking “What’s wrong with the wrestling team?” The way the team has battled injuries and withteam members leaving, they’ve looked hobbled for a while.

From a big picture standpoint, for SDSU this was a very important hire in the scheme of wrestling. The athletic department has sunk money into the program with a new team room and a full-time assistant coach in the last few seasons. Athletic director Justin Sell has made it clear that SDSU wants to be competing for conference championships in all 21 sports and wrestling looked to be among the furthest away. If SDSU wants to win, they had to hire a winner and Bono fits the bill.

Believe me, Bono’s hire doesn’t guarantee anything but it promising for a program looking to turn the corner.

If the Jacks felt like their bats betrayed them in the 10 prior losses before Friday’s doubleheader, they need not blame them anymore.

The SDSU softball team picked up hits to defeat the Coyotes in game one of the doubleheader, 8-4 and then finished off the southern in-state rival with a 1-0 win in front of 173 fans at Jackrabbits Softball Stadium March 30.

SDSU had seven hits in the first game of the afternoon, including home runs from Morgan McCabe and Krista Honken. The Jackrabbits got a solid performance from Kori Seidlitz, who relinquished four runs on two home runs to the Coyotes. However, those were the only USD hits of the game and the Jackrabbits’ junior pitcher delivered eight strikeouts to negate her six walks.

“We’re excited to be at home and playing on our home field. We really took advantage of being out here in the sunshine and having our home crowd here to cheer us on. We knew we were playing a rival and that they were going to give us two good games and we stepped it up,” SDSU head coach Kim Aggabao said of the win, her first at home as the Jacks’ skipper.

The second game’s only run arrived home when shortstop Kelly Kleppin doubled in Honken and Pam Nicholson’s six-hit shutout held up with some solid defense to give the Jacks an afternoon sweep in their home debut. The defense was best exemplified in the seventh inning when Morgan Hancock hit a single to right and tried to stretch it into two bases. Her efforts were to no avail when Honken’s throw to Kleppin was on target for the tag and a rally-stifling out.

“I felt that every pitch I was throwing was going to be a strike and I got a lot of help from my defense. It was just a good day to be pitching out there,” Nicholson said.

In Saturday’s finale, SDSU’s late rally fell short and USD avoided the series sweep with a 3-2 win over the home-standing Jackrabbits.

Runs scored in the second, fourth and fifth innings built a 3-0 USD lead. They stayed out in front with a strong performance from Missy Blackburn for the first five innings. Samantha Terry came through with a pinch-hit RBI single in the sixth inning to make the score 3-1. In the seventh inning, with Blackburn out of the game, the Jackrabbits had runners on first and third with one out when McCabe smacked a fly ball to right field, scoring Devon Reick and cutting the Coyote advantage to just one run. There, the rally fizzled when Alex Landon ended the game with a ground ball to the shortstop and USD got out of Brookings with one win to its name. Nicholson was tagged with the loss, moving her record to 3-8.

“We’ve been playing well as of late and our girls have been building off of our positives. It’s good to get these games in,” Aggabao said.

There is little hiding in the facts for the Jackrabbits right now. At 6-17 and 2-7 in the Summit League, SDSU is behind in the conference tournament chase but every one still counts for the Jackrabbits.

“This series was huge. We knew that we needed to come out and get some wins. These are going to be the wins we’re going to carry forward and that’s going to give us confidence,” Nicholson said.

The conference tournament is still the ultimate goal for the SDSU softball team.

“We have the talent on our team and we have ability and it’s a matter of whether or not we can execute on that particular day to pick up wins,” Honken said

The SDSU men’s basketball team has been on Cloud Nine for the last few days since winning their first Summit League title.

Now it’s back to work.

The Jackrabbits are headed to the “Land of Enchantment” for a chance to make some more noise on the national stage. SDSU drew the 14th seed and will play third-seeded Baylor in Albuquerque, N.M. on Thursday in a South Region second-round matchup of the men’s NCAA Tournament. The game will be at The Pit on the campus of the University of New Mexico and will be aired on Turner Broadcasting’s TruTV network, starting at 6:27 CT.

That moment of seeing “S. Dakota St.” on national television let out a tremendous cheer from fans and players alike, yet another moment that has been special with the Jacks making the tournament.

“It’s been cool. All of the fan support that we have gotten has been really great. But now we’re focusing on Baylor,” said SDSU’s Nate Wolters.

The other side of that draw means it’s time for business.

Baylor, ranked 10th in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll, finished with the same 27-7 mark that the Jackrabbits finished the season with. But the Bears did it in the Big XII conference, finishing a runner-up behind Missouri in the conference’s tournament championship.

“It didn’t matter what draw we were going to get. We knew that we were going to get a very good basketball team,” Jackrabbits head coach Scott Nagy said.

That they are. Baylor will pose the most athletic and challenging foe of the season thus far. Much like Washington, whom the Jacks beat earlier this season, the Bears have future NBA talent in forwards Perry Jones III and Quincy Miller, who make up a formidable front along with Quincy Acy.

“As I look at them I just wonder how we’re going to score around the basket. They’re one of the most athletic teams in the country,” Nagy said.

The Jackrabbits have made a small dent on the national scene and Wolters has quickly made a name for himself, so the Jackrabbits probably won’t be sneaking up on anyone.

“I think it’s a good matchup. We don’t know much about each other. It will be nice to play somebody that we haven’t played all season,” Jones said of the Jackrabbits.

In truth, SDSU has certainly watched more of Baylor in flipping through the television channels on their couches than the Waco, Texas-based team has watched of the first-time tournament players.

“I watched them earlier this year and they’re pretty athletic. We’re going to have to rebound and box out well. We’ll have to try to spread them out,” SDSU’s Jordan Dykstra said.

There will be challenges for the Jackrabbits. That’s to be expected with the ability of Baylor at the level that it is, but SDSU doesn’t want to be the first-timers who are starstruck and blown out in their first experience of the NCAA Tournament.

“We’re just looking to go down there and have some fun. We want to make a splash and to just play our ball and we don’t want to get so caught up in the moment that we don’t play to our potential,” Dykstra said.

The Jackrabbits went out of their way this season to beef up their non-conference schedule, heading to the road to play Minnesota, Georgia and Nebraska, all losses, before breaking through with a 19-point win at Washington. All of that scheduling went for naught when none of the other teams that the Jacks scheduled made the 68-team field, making SDSU the only team in that situation. Nonetheless, SDSU’s head coach, himself a first-timer leading the Jacks on the big stage, says they’ll be ready.

“When I think about trying to stay in the game with them, defense and rebounding and limiting them to one shot are going to be really important to staying in the game,” Nagy said.

After gritting out a 52-50 overtime win over Western Illinois for the Summit League Championship five days prior to the announcement, the defensive effort, the one that has been heralded all season as much improved, came through when it counted.

“Everybody talked about how good Western’s defense was in that game but I think ours was pretty good too. We put a lot of work in the offseason and it paid off,” Dykstra said.

In the swift moments of the matchup being announced, SDSU fans may have cringed when the Jackrabbits were on the 14-seed line, with the Jacks’ RPI and record likely in place to allow them to be better than that. Chad White didn’t seem fazed by the pending matchup.

“They’re beatable. Everybody’s beatable,” he said.

That might be most important. After all, it is March. 

SDSU head coach Scott Nagy said it felt like a dream. But the 6,526 fans in the Sioux Falls Arena and many more around the nation can attest that it’s not: The Jackrabbits are going to the NCAA Tournament.

Senior Griffan Callahan drilled a 3-pointer from the wing with slightly more than a minute to go and the Jackrabbits held on to win the first Summit League championship with a thrilling 52-50 overtime victory over Western Illinois March 6.

The drama mounted all night, with SDSU rallying from 10 points down in the second half to come back and tie the game with two made free throws by Callahan.

They then sent it to overtime when Ceola Clark’s jumper went wide as regulation time expired with the score tied at 44.

For South Dakota basketball fans, among the last in the nation to send a team to the Big Dance, the finale to a tense and stomach-churning game came from the Jackrabbits’ heart and soul.

Western Illinois played the game precisely for its lockdown defense, considered by stats and reputation as the stingiest in the Summit League. The Jackrabbits shot 35 percent in the first half and then only worsened that clip with a 28 percent performance in the second half.

But SDSU got stops when it counted, holding Western Illinois without a basket over the final 4:19 of regulation while cobbling together enough offense to close the gap with pairs of free throws from junior Nate Wolters and senior Griffan Callahan.

The back and forth continued into overtime when SDSU’s Chad White hit a three-pointer to move the Jacks ahead 49-48 with just under three minutes left. Obi Emegano then put WIU ahead 50- 49 on a layup with 2:04 left. At crunch time, Callahan had the final say.

“The main thing was to stay positive,” Callahan said. “They just told me to jump up and shoot with confidence. We weren’t going to stall and if you get an open look, knock it down and that’s what I did.”

“We weren’t good offensively because of how good they were defensively. We stayed in the game because we defended and we’ve been preaching that all year,” said Nagy, who moved to 5-3 in Summit League tournament play.

It is the crowning achievement of Nagy’s 17 years. The coach has won 316 games and was there for each of the tough years during the Division I transition. For those who stuck with the Jackrabbit men, the victory is all that much sweeter.

“I haven’t had very many times in my life where I felt like I was dreaming. It was surreal,” Nagy said.

On the biggest stage the Jackrabbits have ever played on, the statement of the defensive turnaround was exemplified with the Jacks holding WIU to just 50 points.

“It was the focus coming off of last year and it kept us in the basketball game,” Nagy said.

“We just kept getting stops and tried to get a shot to fall and Griff hit a couple of huge ones,” said Wolters, who finished the game with 14 points and tournament MVP honors. Callahan was the only other Jackrabbit in double figures with 10. For the Leathernecks, one win short is tough to take.

“This was a road game,” WIU head coach Jim Molinari said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making excuses. But I think you have to be 10 points better to win here and we weren’t tonight. I knew because of the crowd that they would never let the game get away from them.”

The crowd made a difference in the final minutes, making it difficult to hear late in the game and then making their mark afterward, with SDSU’s students rushing the floor at the final horn.

“It’s still soaking in and it probably will for a few days. It should be a lot of fun, (the) first in school history,” Wolters said. 

The annual Summit League men’s basketball tournament is never void of story lines. But with all due respect to the previous seasons, 2012’s tourney is in shape to top them all.

The scoring prowess in the conference has reached an all-time high, with five players amongst the top 15 in the nation in points per game, led by the nation’s scoring leader Oakland’s Reggie Hamilton. SDSU’s Nate Wolters ranks seventh at 21.4 points per contest, IPFW’s Frank Gaines is ninth, IUPUI’s Alex Young is 11th and Dominique Morrison of Oral Roberts is 15th.

ORU would be the runaway favorite to make it to the Big Dance if the tournament was not being held in Sioux Falls. At 17-1 in the league this year, the Golden Eagles have conquered everyone this season, except the Jackrabbits in Brookings, when SDSU handed ORU a 15-point loss on Feb. 2. While a neutral site, the Jackrabbits will have an advantage at the Sioux Falls Arena with their fan base in the house.

“To be 15-3 and still finish two games out of first tells you how good Oral Roberts is. It’s hard to ask for much more than what our kids have given us at this point,” SDSU head coach Scott Nagy said.

Throw in red-hot Oakland, the two time defending tournament champions who are surging late in the season and will have the third seed in the four-day event, making the league finale quite the interesting finish.

A pair of recent rematches will take place in the first round with SDSU and IUPUI meeting on Saturday night and NDSU and Western Illinois meeting in the battle between the fourth and fifth seeds on Sunday. Both matchups are repeats of the final weekend of the regular season. A third Oakland and Southern Utah is a rematch of the first round from last season but the Golden Grizzlies were the top team last year.

For the Jacks, the good news is they are likely playing their best basketball at the end of the year. The bad news is that they will have the toughest road to the title, through IUPUI, Oakland and Oral Roberts, if the high seeds hold. All three have been where SDSU wants to be: the NCAA Tournament.

The pressure is on Oral Roberts. They, along with Southern Utah who is headed to the Big Sky, are leaving the conference for the Southland and would be able to make their lasting mark and punch their fourth tournament championship ticket during their time in the Summit League.

Western Illinois rarely finds a defensive struggle that they don’t like and SDSU played along until the threes were too much for the Leathernecks.

In what can best be described as a rock fight, the Jackrabbits showed their outside shooting prowess in a 74-57 win over the Leathernecks Feb. 23 in Brookings, extending SDSU’s home winning streak to 16 games.

Despite having locked up their seed for the Summit League Tournament, the Jacks were desperate to avoid a letdown before the conference tournament and trying to save their mark as an undefeated team at home.

“Everybody I talked to this week was talking about the tournament, they weren’t really talking about this weekend,” Head Coach Scott Nagy said. “So we worked really hard to keep our players focused just on this game.”

SDSU made nine three-pointers, five of them from Jordan Dykstra who complete a perfect night from behind the arc with 23 points and eight rebounds.

“We just had to swing the ball from wing to wing and the coaches have been harping on us all week because we haven’t been doing that lately. We did that and we had some open shots,” Dykstra said.

Playing ugly is how the Leathernecks like to roll and they’ve used it to battle the top teams before including the first meeting between the two teams in December, when the Jackrabbits prevailed by a point in Macomb, Ill. But WIU coach Jim Molinari said that his team tried to play faster in the game and, with little depth, found themselves in big trouble later.

The Jackrabbits (23-7,14-3) opened the game to a 7-0 start but unlike their recent home trend of blowing out Summit League teams at home, Western fought their way back into the game, scoring 10 of the next 12 points. SDSU rallied for a 17-5 run over the middle of the first half and the Jackrabbits built an 11-point lead at the break.

WIU had trouble controlling the pace in the second half and the Jacks’ continued to get open looks from deep, connecting on three more triples, the last of which came from Dykstra to make it a 20-point game with over three minutes left.

SDSU finished the game with a 12 rebound advantage over the ‘Necks and finished with 19 assists on 26 made field goals, their best assist-rate in a single game all year. Perhaps most importantly, the Jackrabbits played well without the full assistance of Nate Wolters, who had fallen under the weather and was described by Nagy as human. Despite a season-low 10 points, his impact was felt.

“He was about as human as I’ve seen him tonight. He should feel good about it and our team should feel good, too,” Nagy said.