Hey, guess what?
It’s time to start talking basketball. Well, it’s never NOT been time to talk about basketball, because that time is all the time for me. But we are getting closer to the basketball season, and I’ve already started prepping for the SEC Conference Previews. That means it’s also time to look at the non-conference schedule.
The Full Non-Conference Schedule:
- October 24th — vs. Kansas State (exhibition)
- November 3rd — at Howard Bison | Preview
- November 7th — vs. Southeast Missouri | Preview
- November 9th — vs VMI | Preview
- November 12th — vs Minnesota | Preview
- November 17th — vs Prairie View A&M | Preview
- November 20th — vs South Dakota
- November 25th — vs South Carolina State
- November 28th — vs Cleveland State
- December 2nd — at Notre Dame
- December 7th — vs Kansas (in Kansas City, MO)
- December 11th — vs Alabama State
- December 14th — vs Bethune-Cookman
- December 22nd — vs Illinois (in St. Louis, MO)
These previews aren’t here to re-hash the argument over whether Dennis Gates put together a good schedule or not. It’s simply to talk about the opponents, and what
can be expected. We’re also not going to use these to preview Kansas State since it’s an exhibition. We’ll do a quick K-State preview before the game, but for now we’re going to focus on the games that matter.
Let’s Meet: South Dakota Coyotes
The University of South Dakota was founded in 1862 in the town of Vermillion, which was not in the state of South Dakota because that did not exist until 1889. Vermillion is a small town in southeast South Dakota, best known for being a camping spot for Lewis & Clark on their journey westward. Its most notable alumni might be Tom Brokaw, the former NBC nightly news anchor and journalist.
South Dakota basketball made the official jump to Division 1 in 2009, when they joined the Great West Conference, and the shortly thereafter the Summit league. Current Summit members are Oral Roberts, South Dakota State, Nebraska Omaha, North Dakota, North Dakota State, Denver, UMKC (now just Kansas City), and St. Thomas. The league is best known for good offense and quite questionable defense.
The Coyotes haven’t been in Division 1 all that long, they have yet to make an NCAA appearance. Their best season was in 2018 when Craig Smith won 26 games, came in 2nd in the league, but lost to South Dakota State in the Summit finals to now Iowa State head coach T.J. Otzelberger. Smith parlayed that gig into the Utah State job, and then the Utah job. Todd Lee took over and after 4 years he was fired after going 11-7 in conference play. Since then it’s been Eric Peterson’s job.
Head Coach | Eric Peterson | 4th Season 43-53
Peterson took over in 2022, as South Dakota was looking to rekindle the Craig Smith magic, as Peterson was an assistant under Smith since 2014. He followed him from South Dakota, to Utah State and then to Utah when USD came calling. His head coaching experience dipped into the JUCO ranks when he went 52-15 in 2 seasons at Williston State, in North Dakota.
Peterson spent his first two seasons building the program up and last year had something of a breakthrough. He broke through by playing fast on offense, with the second fastest offense tempo in the country, even faster than Alabama. In his first three seasons he owns just one top 100 win, a neutral site win over BYU, a game where the Coyotes shot over 50% from three and the Cougars shot just 21%. Going a bit further, Peterson has won just 2 non-conference road games since taking over, beating Western Michigan and Western Illinois. And the collective work against Power Conference teams is an 0-5 record with an average loss of 22.2 points per game.
Peterson improved the program from where he inherited it, but there’s headwinds working against him in the NIL space which is depleting mid-major rosters. Maybe with a fun offensive system in place the Coyotes can continue to make their way up.
Series History | None
Dennis Gates is just creating series histories all over the place now. Missouri is 31-3 versus the Summit League over the years. One of those losses was at home, to UMKC in 2021… man I had memory holed that game. The road loss was when Mizzou inexplicably went to Oral Roberts, I mean of all the schools to go play a road game… that’s up there. The final loss was another game Mizzou fans probably want to memory hole, it was the NCAA loss to Northern Iowa, who was in the Summit League in 1990, well it was called the Mid-Continent Conference then, but became the Summit in 2007.
What about the team now?
The transfer portal is a curse for good mid-major programs, and especially for programs who finally break out in a year where a player, with eligibility left, takes a bit of a leap.
Peterson built his offense around Chase Forte, a 6-4 guard who transferred from Northwestern State. Forte was heavy usage and put up good numbers but again entered the transfer portal and is now at Boston College. The school’s second leading scorer though was 6-4 sophomore Isaac Bruns who is BACK! Bruns pumped in 14.6 ppg and spent the first half of the season coming off the bench before being inserted into the starting lineup.
Isaac’s younger brother Luke is on the team now, and his older brother Paul just graduated.
The portal giveth as well, Jordan Crawford transfers in from Eastern Kentucky after averaging 7.8 ppg last year as a sophomore. They also added Josiah Dotzler from SLU, and Ethan Kizer from South Alabama.
Back is forward Ashton Smith, a part time starter at center, and Cameron Fens, a 7’0 post who spent half of last season on the injured list. Jake Brack is another oft-injured forward with some starting experience who is back and hopefully healthy. Shey Eberwein saw about 17 minutes per game off the bench and chipped in about 4.5 points per game.
It’s not a murderers row, but South Dakota should be well schooled and be able to score points. Where they struggle is on defense. In the last three years the Coyotes haven’t finished higher than 332nd in KenPom for Adjusted Defensive efficiency, they don’t force turnovers and give a pretty high 2FG% so I would expect Missouri to feast.
