VERMILLION, S.D. — South Dakota women’s basketball remains at No. 12 for the second-straight week in the latest USA Today Coaches’ Poll released Tuesday — the highest ranking for any Summit League men’s or women’s team in the nearly 40-year history of the conference. On Monday, the Coyotes moved up three spots to No. 17 in the Associated Press poll.
As a team ranked easily in the Top 16 in one poll and on the edge of the Top 16 in the other, does this mean the Yotes (27-2) have a shot at a Top 4 seed in the NCAA Women’s Tournament, and therefore a chance to host home games in the first and second rounds?
Probably not, if you follow the lead of “bracketologists.” ESPN’s Charlie Creme USD slotted as a No. 6 seed in the Fort Wayne region, and the Coyotes would travel to Spokane, Washington, to play the first two rounds in the home arena of No. 3 seed Gonzaga. Another website, “College Sports Madness,” has USD as a 7-seed.
Even a three-game Summit League Tournament winning performace that mirrors the Yotes’ 16-0 regular season mark, with an average win by 32 points, would not push USD from a 6 to a 4, veteran Summit League analyst Brad Newitt of Midco Sports Network told KWSN’s “Craig and John” on Monday.
Quite simply, the Summit League is too weak to help USD in metrics such as RPI, where it ranks No. 29, and strength of schedule (169) out of 351 teams.
South Dakota State (69th) is the only other team in the conference with a Top 100 RPI. The next best after that is Western Illinois at 206, followed by Denver (229), Oral Roberts (218) and North Dakota (220). Three of the league’s nine teams are in the bottom 100 — NDSU (268), Omaha (315), Fort Wayne (339).
The Yotes certainly had what should be considered a strong non-conference schedule. Their only two losses are 73-60 at current RPI No. 1 South Carolina and at home to current RPI No. 9 Missouri State. Their RPI Top 100 wins included a neutral site 68-53 victory over RPI No. 22 Ohio State, and home wins over Drake (26th), Creighton (45).
But other noncon wins that seemed impressive at the time don’t do USD much good: At Utah (115, with a 13-16 record), at Green Bay (120th, 18-12) and a home victory over Missouri (167th, and at 8-21 and 5-11 in the SEC, the 11th out of 14 seeds in the SEC Tournament).
The Coyotes have run the table in the league for the second time in three years. In 28 years of the Summit League / Mid-Continent Conference, only three teams have completed a regular season sweep and South Dakota is the first program to do it twice.
USD set a program record for regular season victories with 27 with the team’s only losses this season coming to No. 1 South Carolina and No. 21 Missouri State.
This marks South Dakota’s 14th consecutive week in the USA Today Coaches Poll, tying the longest streak by a Summit League team. The Coyotes’ 10 weeks in the AP Top 25 is also tied for the most single-season appearances in Summit history.
The No. 17/12 Coyotes are the Summit League Tournament opener at noon Saturday inside the Denny Sanford PREMIER Center in Sioux Falls. South Dakota faces eighth-seeded Omaha in the quarterfinals.
KWSN will carry all the USD women’s games in the Summit Leauge Tournament:
98.1 FM and 1230-AM.
