Doesn’t take that long

In today’s preview of the South Dakota State-South Dakota men’s basketball game, I went light on the history of the matchup, which we hit pretty hard a month ago, and heavy on an attempt to give a glimpse as to what is going on right now for both basketball teams.

The obvious things going on right now: 1. SDSU is contending for a Summit League title, but they’re probably going to have to keep winning at an alarming rate to close the deal. You’d have to think one more loss would make it very difficult to catch Oral Roberts. With one rout of the leaders on local ground already, however, the No. 2 seed in the Summit League tournament at Sioux Falls Arena doesn’t look like such a bad deal.

2. The USD season has been an aberration, with offensive issues persistent. The way I think, pointing out that the Coyotes in the 24 years with Dave Boots have never been a part of anything close to this in terms of wins and losses, is paying a compliment to the coach. For this USD team to come out of its first Summit League season looking like overachievers there were going to have to be some close wins included. To this point they haven’t won any of the close ones. If you’re having a good season, you win most of the tight games. During an average season, you win some close ones and during a last-place season, you win almost none. The Coyotes lost at IPFW in a game that went into the last minute and lost at home to Southern Utah and Western Illinois in games that were determined in the last minute. The return game at Southern Utah was also a last-minute loss. There have been no last-minute wins.

Nobody outside the USD program cares at all about the Coyotes losing close games right now, but consider:

The 2011-12 version of the Summit League, currently 16th in RPI conference ratings, is much better than its predecessors. Part of the reason for that involves the ascendancy, from the bottom of the pile, of tonight’s Coyote opponent. The Summit was 21st in RPI in 2010-11, 23rd in 2009-10 and 26th in 2008-09. The Jacks, meanwhile, lost the first 19 Summit League road games they played, including every one during what was, conference-wide, a comparatively weak 2008-09 league season.  And yet, with the same coach, they’ll return to the DakotaDome tonight as the heavy favorite to defeat the Coyotes. More importantly, they’ll also likely be the betting favorite, with the help of a home crowd jazzed by this season’s turnaround, at the Summit League tournament in Sioux Falls in March.

For that reason — with tonight being an exception — there should be nothing better for a Coyote fan than to see SDSU’s 2011-12 season to continue rolling. The rival you love to hate offers hope for the future. I like the irony.

Also, in my interview with Boots this week about this game, I didn’t have room for the following, which touches on some of the big-picture (positive) elements to the season for USD:

“We see where we’re trying to go and we’re learning more about how we have to get there. It’s been a good experience being in the Summit League this year, seeing the new teams we’re going to be playing against, knowing that every night is going to be a tough game. The league is good top-to-bottom. Unfortunately, the bottom half is going to end up with a bad record because that’s how leagues work. But we really like playing in the league, getting used to it, and we’re going to improve in the short-term here and the long-term. We have to do a lot of things better. We have to get the current guys we have improved — and recruting is going to be a huge part of this. We’re starting to be on the right track with that. We don’t want this to be a long-term project. We can improve this thing quickly. But it has been a good experience so far. We’re not where we want to be but we like what our guys have done. Their attitudes have been tremendous.”