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March 15, 2010


South Dakota looks to overcome the odds
by John Stansberry


Most folks wouldn't expect to find a school in the third season of a transition from Division II to Division I playing postseason basketball.

But winning basketball is a tradition at South Dakota, so the school's fans aren't surprised at all to find their team competing in the CollegeInsider.com tournament (CIT) on Tuesday against Creighton.

Since arriving in Vermillion in 1988, Dave Boots has posted 465 victories and led the Coyotes to fifteen straight 20-win seasons.

That includes the current campaign that has South Dakota sitting at 22-9 after winning the Great West tournament this past weekend.

The winner of the tournament was slated to receive an automatic bid to the CIT. After dominating the league all season, South Dakota was most certainly a deserving recipient.

But the Coyotes can't rest on their laurels for long as they get set to play at Creighton. Traditionally, trips to Omaha have almost always ended in failure for South Dakota teams.

Creighton is a mindboggling 31-1 all-time at home against USD, with 21 of those games being double-digit victories. Only a school like Clemson, mired in a 54-game losing streak at North Carolina, can sympathize with USD's plight.

But unlike Clemson's torture, none of South Dakota's pain is recent in nature. USD and Creighton last played way back in 1968, so this Coyote team actually has a great shot at starting a new chapter in the series.

Senior forward Tyler Cain will be looking to extend his USD career by at least one more game. He surpassed the 1,000 point and 1,000 rebound marks this season and was named Great West Player of the Year by both CollegeInsider.com and the Sporting News.

Center Steve Smith also passed the 1,000 point mark himself this season. For him, the visit to Creighton brings his college career full circle.

He began his playing days with Creighton back in 2004 but leg and back injuries kept him sidelined for most of his first two years in Omaha. Seeing the writing on the wall there, he transferred to USD.

The injuries limited him in his first two seasons in Vermillion, and he played last season with a torn labrum and a torn rotator cuff that required offseason surgery.

The fact that Smith even stuck around long enough to make this trip back to his old haunts really is a testament to perseverance.

And perseverance is what it'll take to beat a Creighton team that, at least on paper, has a deeper bench and a stout home court advantage.

A South Dakota win will most certainly be tabbed as an upset, but would it really be? A team that's forced itself into postseason play this quickly is pretty damn good.
 

Feb. 22, 2010


The Long and Winding Road
by John Stansberry

This feature also appeared on FoxSports.com

The Great West Conference might have a very specific geographic reference in its title, but it's truly a league with a national scope.

By stretching from New Jersey to the Dakotas and down to Utah and Houston, the Great West has made sure that none of its members have the cushy road trips that are a hallmark of other less expansive leagues.

In the ACC, North Carolina and Duke are separated by about 15 miles, and for either school it's a short drive over to NC State. Mississippi State is roughly 75 miles away from both its primary SEC rivals, Alabama and Ole Miss. And while the Big East has some monster trips, Seton Hall only has to drive 14 miles to play St. John's in Madison Square Garden and just a couple miles more to play Rutgers.

The shortest road trip you'll find in the Great West is the 348 mile round trip from South Dakota to North Dakota. Houston Baptist benefits from the league's second shortest distance between Great West rivals, it's a 582 mile round trip to play Texas-Pan American.

After that, the miles start piling up in a hurry. When you throw in non-conference road games against the likes of Boise State, Michigan and Middle Tennessee, here's how things stack up this season for Houston Baptist:


From Houston, TX to Ann Arbor, MI - 2,160 miles (round trip)
From Houston, TX to Natchitoches, LA - 386 miles (round trip)
From Houston, TX to New Orleans, LA - 634 miles (round trip)
From Houston, TX to Boise, ID - 1,491 miles
From Boise, ID to Omaha, NE - 1,359 miles
From Omaha, NE to Houston, TX - 792 miles
From Houston, TX to Memphis, TN - 972 miles (round trip)
From Houston, TX to Dallas, TX - 225 miles
From Dallas, TX to Arlington, TX - 18 miles
From Arlington, TX to Houston, TX - 227 miles
From Houston, TX to Chicago, IL - 1,880 miles (round trip)
From Houston, TX to Orem, UT - 2,344 miles (round trip)
From Houston, TX to Edinburg, TX - 582 miles (round trip)
From Houston, TX to Murfreesboro, TN - 1,336 miles (round trip)
From Houston, TX to Newark, NJ - 2,822 miles (round trip)
From Houston, TX to Grand Forks, ND 1,258 miles
From Grand Forks, ND To Vermillion, SD - 348 miles
From Vermillion, SD to Houston, TX - 911 miles

That's 19,745 miles worth of travel...and that doesn't include another trip to Orem for the Great West Tournament in March.
 

Feb. 10, 2010


Tradition-Challenged in the Windy City
by John Stansberry

This feature also appeared on FoxSports.com


As college basketball programs go, Chicago State is somewhat, well, "tradition challenged," for lack of a better term.

The school has only had a men's program since the 1966-67 season, and it wasn't until 1984-85 that it made the jump to Division I. The Cougars' record since then has been an underwhelming 202-502.

Last season Chicago State didn't get a postseason bid despite posting a 19-13 record. In fact, the school has NEVER made a postseason appearance.

The closest CSU ever came was its last season as a member of the Mid-Continent back in 2005-06. The Cougars advanced all the way to the Mid-Con Tourney final as a sixth seed before falling to top seeded Oral Roberts by an 85-72 count.

Since then, life as an independent wasn't taking the program anywhere it wanted to go, so that's why joining the Great West Conference this season was so important. In hoops, there's definitely strength in numbers.

While an NCAA Tournament bid isn't available to the league just yet, there's still a postseason brass ring. The of this year's Great West tourney will get an automatic bid to the CollegeInsider.com Tournament.

For a school like CSU, such a bid would mark a new era for the program. However, year one in the Great West hasn't been a smooth ride for head coach Benjy Taylor's team.

Coming into this campaign, the Cougars returned only one starter (forward Carl Montgomery) off of a team that set school records for points scored (2,869) and total rebounds (1,289).

That inexperience was a big factor in the nine-game losing streak that the Cougars endured from late December into January. The last four of those losses were the team's first four Great West games, all of which happened to be on the road.

But CSU appears to have righted the ship in the last week by getting into the positive columin in league play with wins over Utah Valley and Texas-Pan American.

Although the Cougars are currently in the conference cellar, Taylor's team appears to have weathered the storm and created some positive momentum.

Leading the resurgence has been Montgomery, who posted two double-doubles last week en route to being named Great West Player of the Week. He's arguably playing the best basketball in the league right now.

Also heating up in recent weeks has been combo threat Kabangu Tshinga Kasamba. The 6-5 tweener has posted four consecutive double digit scoring efforts after averaging 3.2 points in the six games before that.

Due to the quirkiness of the inaugurial Great West schedule, CSU has two upcoming games against first place South Dakota. That'll tell us a lot about this team's prospects headed into the conference tourney.

But regardless of how things shake out this season, this program now seems poised to break into the postseason in the very near future.

A big reason for that is Taylor's ability to recruit the talent-rich area right around the school. There are 10 players on the current roster who hail from Chicagoland, eight of whom cut their teeth as preps in the tough Chicago Public League.

It seems that after 25 years in Division I, Chicago State is finally ready to start building some tradition. And it'll have a distinctly local flavor.



Feb. 3, 2010


Can Houston Baptist and Texas-Pan American keep it up in the Great West?
by John Stansberry


This feature also appeared on FoxSports.com


Handicapping a league race in college hoops isn't the simplest endeavor, but it's not exactly rocket science, either. Any given league has a core group of three or four solid contenders from which the best of breed can usually be chosen.

But in the case of the Great West Conference, those rules don't really apply this season. When it's year one for a league, the contenders and pretenders are a little harder to discern.

While South Dakota and Utah Valley have shown flashes of great play entering the conference season, neither of those teams sits atop the early Great West standings.

Nope, the early leaders out of the gate are Houston Baptist and Texas Pan-American, both of which are sitting on 2-0 league marks.

While life in non-conference play this season has been very unkind at times for the Huskies and Broncs (HBU dropped a 93-52 decision to Memphis while UTPA absorbed a 100-44 beating at the hands of Missouri), they've still emerged as the last two Great West squads with unblemished marks in league play.

In one of the quirkiest starts to a conference schedule this season, HBU and UTPA have gotten a leg up on their Great West competitors despite sporting a combined overall record of 6-33.

Those numbers aren't pretty, but hey, that's all water under the bridge now. Their perfect starts in Great West play represent new leases on life. The big question is this...can these teams sustain it?

For Houston Baptist, it might be a matter of whether or not forward Mario Flaherty can keep up his productivity against Great West foes. His numbers in HBU's two league wins: 24.5 ppg, 11 rpg, 3 bpg and 60% shooting from the field.

In the case of UTPA, junior college transfer Matt Mierzyckt needs to keep up the steady improvement he's shown since making his debut back on December 7. He's come off the bench to average 14.5 in the Broncs' two conference wins.

In terms of overall team play, both squads need to get tougher on the defensive end to remain factors in the Great West race. Out of 347 Division I teams, stat guru Ken Pomeroy currently has HBU ranked 293rd and UTPA 302nd in defensive efficiency.

Conference road games are never easy, and both teams are back loaded with those. The Huskies and Broncs both finish their regular season slates playing six of their final eight Great West contests in opposing gyms.


John Stansberry is in his thirteenth season as  a senior writer for collegeinsider.com. Check out John's blog LonelyTailgater.com EMAIL JOHN