SIOUX FALLS – No. 2 South Dakota State women’s basketball will play for its third-straight Summit League Championship title on Tuesday after trotting to a 76-56 semifinal win over No. 6 North Dakota State on Monday afternoon.
The Jackrabbits (23-9) advance to their 10th final in 12 years — they won each of the previous nine, powered by a partisan crowd — and will face in-state rival South Dakota (29-2) in the final for the fifth time in six years.
The Jacks won each of the first four matchups, with USD was the No. 1 seed in three of them. That will be the case tomorrow, when the Coyotes will ride in on an 18-game winning streak and an average win of 35 points per game in sweeping its Summit League slate.
This included two wins over SDSU — an 83-48 thrashing in Vermillion on Jan. 19 and 77-67 on Feb. 22 in Brookings, a much more competitive tilt but one in which the Yotes never seemed threatened.
Whether SDSU’s latest attempt to take down USD at just the right time will look like the other four, with the poised Jacks confidently finding their stride, propelled by a tidal wave of noise from the Sea of Blue in the Denny Sanford Premier Center likely outnumbering the Yote fans in red, remains to be seen.
But the Jackrabbits’ win on Monday over the Bison sure felt familiar in front of a crowd of 6,507 in their home away from home.
The Bison hung around for most of the first half, trailing 15-13 before SDSU finished the first quarter on a 7-2 run to lead 22-15. The second quarter was a stalemate, with SDSU take a 38-30 at the break before SDSU burst out of halftime on a 12-2 run for a 53-32 lead that was more than enough cushion to cruise the rest of the way.
“Well, fun environment and really proud of our team. I thought they played well out there,” said head coach Aaron Johnston.
“It was a physical game for both teams. I thought we did a really good job again, for another day, defensively. We forced some turnovers that took them out of some of their rhythm. They did a great job, North Dakota State, the beginning of the year to where they are at now. Just had a really good building year. I’m sure they will continue to improve going forward. They gave us a lot of different looks today and I think it took us a while to get settled in what we needed to do offensively. Credit to them for having that kind of a plan going into it.”
Tori Nelson led the SDSU scoring attack with 21 points, shooting 9-of-12 from the field including 3-of-4 from beyond the arc. Tylee Irwin scored 18 along with four boards and five assists. Paiton Burckhard led SDSU with eight rebounds and dished out four assists to go along with her 14 points. Tagyn Larson also reached double-digits in scoring for the 18th time this season with 10 points.”I was really proud of how we played,” Johnston said. “Great to see Tori play well. Tylee made some shots too and defended really well and I thought we managed through some foul trouble there. Good win for us. It gives us a chance to play again on Tuesday, which is what we want.”
