The third Ma the charm for the Jacks, as they lost the two regular season matchups against their in-state rival.South Dakota State women’s team will be dancing into the NCAA Tournament after they defeated the top-seeded South Dakota Coyotes 65-50 for their eighth Summit League Women’s Basketball Championship.
“This was the most important time,” senior forward Thompson said. “We didn’t want to dwell on the past at all.”
And they didn’t.
The Jacks jumped all over the Coyotes and ran out to a 11-0 run to start the game. Except for the opening 13 seconds, SDSU led for the entire game.
“At the beginning we were a little rattled,” USD redshirt senior guard Jasmine Trimboli said after the game. “That wasn’t our intention.”
SDSU was led by the Summit League Tournament Most Valuable Player Macy Miller, who had a double-double. Miller finished the game with 16 points and 11 rebounds. She also added four assists and three steals.
It wasn’t just Miller who led the Jacks Tuesday afternoon.
Sophomore forward Tagyn Larson scored 13 points and nearly doubled her season average of 7.4 points per game. Freshman forward Myah Selland had 10 points and eight rebounds.
Coming into the game, the Jacks strove not to change their gameplan, but execute better. They were able to do that, especially in the paint.
SDSU scored 36 points in the paint, while South Dakota scored just 16.
“I think we always thrive when we get points in the paint,” Thompson said. “I think we did a good job of keeping them out of the paint.”
Thompson finished the game with 14 points and six rebounds.
SDSU was also able to out-rebound the Coyotes by 15. Despite owning such a large rebounding margin, the Jacks only had four second-chance points. USD had five second-chance points.
Defensively, the Jacks were able to clamp down as the Coyotes had just one scorer in double figures. Ciara Duffy finished the game with 12 points.
As a team, the South Dakota Coyotes shot just 28 percent from the field. Coming into the title game, they were the top Summit League team with a field goal percentage of 47 percent.
“We missed some opportunities that we haven’t missed many in many of our games,”said USD head coach Dawn Plitzuweit.
The Coyotes looked like they might have been able to make a run in the third quarter, after they shot nearly 47 percent from the floor, but came out flat in the fourth quarter and shot just 20 percent.
There were plenty of opportunities for the Coyotes, as the Jacks had 20 turnovers, but USD was simply unable to take advantage of the mistakes. USD turned the ball over 13 times.
Despite having seven more turnovers, the Coyotes scored the same points off of turnovers as the Jacks, at 14 points.
There were 8,704 people in attendance at the Denny Sanford PREMIER Center for the game.
Now, the Jacks will shift their focus to getting healthy and finding out who their first-round opponent will be in the NCAA Tournament.
“I’m ready to relax a little bit now,” said SDSU head coach Aaron Johnston.
The selection show for the Jackrabbits will be shown on ESPN at 6 p.m. on March 12.
