"I don't have ballplayers, I've got GIRLS!"

Petrel · November 9, 2011

May 2012

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Have you ever watched Glengarry Glen Ross? If you do, it will teach you a lot about coaching even though it has nothing to do with coaching or any sport.

It was a hard movie to watch. It was about desperation. The plot is that there are these guys who sell real estate parcels of land out of some dingy little office, and they ain't doing too good. Then they get the call to Jesus by the big salesman Blake who was sent in from the front office to "motivate" them:

"You see this watch? That watch costs more than your car. I made 970,000 dollars last year, how much you make? You see pal, that's who I am, and you're nothing. Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? **** you, go home and play with your kids. ... If you don't like it, leave."

The "motivation" is that there will be a sales contest. First place is a new car. Second place is steak knives. Third place and lower is that you're fired. The salesmen live on leads, which are cards containing the names and phone numbers of people who have pensions or some money and who might be interested. The really good leads are the Glengarry/Glen Ross leads - but these guys won't get them. Because of their failures at sales, they'll have to make due with the crappy leads, trying to sell land to people either too timid or too poor to buy it.

Live on the edge. Succeed or you're fired. First place is a car (NCAA tournament), second place is steak knives (WNIT), third place is you're fired. That lesson was hard to miss. But the bigger lesson - one I missed the first time - was that these guys will pretty much do anything to make a sale, puff up clients, lie, cheat, and backstab each other.

Great movie, one I rewatch at least once every year just to remember the business I'm in. Women's coaches aren't the con-artists of Glengarry Glen Ross, but I've seen some pretty shady stuff, it is cuthroat, and your survival is on the line with every decision you make. If one recruit turns out to be the equilvant of the Nyborgs in the movie, you might be turning in your resignation one or two years down the line.

You don't think about sales when you're coaching. But in a lot of ways, that's what it is.

(* * *)

We received word from Willie Burbank that the University of South Dakota had found a little bit of extra money for women's basketball. They bumped up our small budget by 4.2 percent. One might say, "That 4.2 percent isn't a lot of money?"

Maybe not. But it might provide the squad with the cash to make one more evaluation. It might be the difference between an assistant coach visit and a head coach visit. Any extra amount of money could make the difference between getting a recruit and not getting one - and I knew that as soon as players found out about that extra $3000 bump that the big-money conferences could offer them (but we couldn't) that we'd need every bit of cash that we could get.

I thanked Willie Burbank when he called me up. "Oh by the way," he said, "tell me how you think we'll do next year. Give me your worst case scenario and your best case."

"Worst case? Worst case is that we don't progress. We finish just like we did last year, or worse. Best case? We finish with a .500 record for the year and maybe win a game in the Summit League tournament."

"All right," he said. "The boosters want to see us finish at .500 in the conference."

I thought about it. We finished at 7-11 the year before in the Summit League - two games out of .500. That would be equivalent to a 6-10 record this season. 6-10 vs. 8-8 - just two games."

"Mark," he said, "if you can get us a .500 record or better that might convince one of the Howling Pack to open up his wallet. It would be much appreciated."

"I'll see what I can do. I don't see my girls until July That's the earliest the NCAA will let us get them in. I still have walk-on tryouts in August for that missing scholarship. I'm trying to work on some professors with regard to scheduling, but everyone's preparing to go off campus after final exams. Summer's not a good time to talk."

Burbank patiently waited. "But..?"

"But we'll see how it plays out. I'm optimistic that we can win .500." I didn't bother to tell him that I was optimistic last season - when we started the year 1-10.

(* * *)

Final exams were over. That first Saturday of May, four senior women's basketball players at the University of South Dakota graduated. Harley Lewis, Morgan Tavarez, Saniyah Barth, Ellie Hester and Ashley Sayer were all gone. I was there during commencement at the DakotaDome. It was fitting that they got to graduate in the place where they had spent so many of their hours at USD.

I knew that Tavarez and Hester had dreams of playing beyond college, maybe in Europe. I didn't see it happening. They weren't good enough. I knew that Lewis, Barth and Sayer were moving on into the real world. God bless 'em. I think of people like me who have been lucky enough to turn a game a career; they have the much tougher jobs that we do.

An interesting sidebar was that I was able to meet Katy Jones, the former women's coach at the University of South Dakota, the woman whose job I took. She had recruited each of these young women, and had spent three years with those young women, and she had come back to USD to see them graduate. She had moved down to Division II, but she had not forgotten them.

(By the way - she was very polite. We had a very pleasant chat. She had mentally moved on and had no animosity to me. I didn't mention Emily Roque, and it never came up.)

(* * *)

There is a period in women's basketball when students from other colleges let it be known that they are unhappy at their present institutions and intend to transfer. With rare cases excluded, the bulk of those students declaring were two-points-a-game benchwarmers.

I made a half-hearted attempt at trying to get some of these young women interested in South Dakota - but for the most part they had no interest, and the kinds of players who made inquiries were the kind of players I didn't want. Either they got in trouble at their home schools that I didn't want to bring to USD, or they had a great overestimation of their talents. As I just wrote, most of these players weren't any better than the players I already had. I was just glad that my own players weren't walking out the door.

(* * *)

Meanwhile, at the University of Tennessee, the question remained as to who would be Claire Kelley's successor.

There were very many qualified names. Julia Rankin was considered the front runner, a former player under Kelley who now coached at LSU. Another promising candidate was former player Jolie Voight who was coaching at North Carolina State. Someone even suggested Ken Kelley, Claire Kelley's son who was on the men's basketball team at the University of Tennessee.

My understanding was that Rankin and Voight were interested, but each had recently stepped into their own head coaching positions. The administration at UT didn't want to deal with extricating these coaches from their positions there and instead made a very interesting choice for the new Tennessee Lady Vols head coach.

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Ember McGann was the 59-year old head coach at Mississippi State. She had been a graduate assistant under Claire Kelley back in 1975, so there was a connection to the UT program. She had gone to school in Tennessee (Chattanooga) and coached there for 11 years. After that, she coached at Kentucky and had coached the Lady Bulldogs since 1995.

There were many advantages in hiring McGann. She had had proven success at three different Dvision I schools, including one in Tennessee. She was known as the kind of person who could do a lot with little resources. There would also not be a need to pay her a Claire Kelley-level salary.

But the best reason for hiring her was that...she was old, relatively speaking. Tennessee admins figured that McGann would retire in four or five years, and by that time they'd have their choice between Rankin and Voight, whichever of the two was the most successful. At the time, I suspected that this wouldn't work out. There is only one Claire Kelley, and coaches like that prove to be impossible to replace.

(* * *)

Other moves in women's basketball were very interesting:

Richard Brake retired after several years in women's basketball at DePaul Unversity.

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He had been a coach at DePaul for 26 years. He had been a head of several USA national teams, a head of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association and had even coached in the old Women's Pro Basketball League for two seasons. Brake was just one of those people whose corpse you figured you'd have to haul off the court, but he retired from the women's game.

His replacement was Janiya Snyder, the last person to get a win against Claire Kelley on the basketball court, knocking the Lady Vols out of the 2012 tournament.

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Snyder knocked off the Lady Vols in her first year at Wisconsin - and then jumped ship, Lane Kiffin-style! Unlike Kiffin, it wasn't like Snyder had some sort of previous DePaul connection. She was from Decatur, Georgia.

The reason she gave Wisconsin? "Personal reasons." Reasons which were never disclosed until years later, when she stated that her zeal to be a great head coach made her first year so stressful at Wisconsin that she had been seriously thinking of resigning. (Wisconsin had surprised many and gone to the Elite Eight.)

DePaul gave her a chance to start all over again and to forget the self-imposed stress of Wisconsin. However, Snyder's refusal to give reasons about her departure left women's basketball fans gossiping for years. There were all sorts of rumors about scandals of one sort or another at Wisconsin, or that she didn't get along with Big Ten culture, or other reasons. I don't think much of messageboards and fans.

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People saw Francesca Emerson's "retirement" at Kansas as something long in the making. She had been a successful coach at Virginia Tech, but her Jayhawks teams just couldn't cut it in Kansas. An 8-22 season in 2011-12 sealed her fate. She would be replaced by William Boyd out of Bowling Green, which ended 2012 ranked #10 in the country and which had come off an Elite Eight appearance.

Boyd was one of those coaches you knew was going to go somewhere big. At the press conference announcing his hire, he stated, "I want Kansas to be the American capital of basketball."

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A move no one expected was the retirement of Ella Kessler at Penn State. She resigned her position to become an administrator at the NCAA head office. After a 12-18 season in 2008, Kessler decided to put the law degree she earned at Notre Dame to work. She'll be replaced by Robert Calton, who took the Richmond Spiders to the second round of the NCAA Tournament in 2012.

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But the most significant of these coaching changes was the retirement of Timothy Palmisano at Villanova. He had been coach at Villanova for 24 years, but he had never been one of those coaches you felt was a great coach despite an impressive record of over 500 wins. Despite that, he had a grand total of one showing in the Elite Eight almost ten years earlier.

After a 13-17 season, Villanova took a close look at their women's basketball program. In earlier decades, ADs seemed happy if a program would not embarrass the university. It kept the Title IX crowd from complaining, and if you had even modest success a coach could parlay that into a salary for life. (Because no one was paying attention to women's basketball anyway.) But as the cost of being competitive in the Big East increased, and as virtually no women's basketball program turned a profit, the administrators of Villanova came to a conclusion similar to the same conclusion being reached across the country - "If we are forced to spend money for Title IX compliance, the coaches of women's programs are going to be held to a higher standard. 'Good enough for a women's team' isn't good enough anymore. Win, or get out."

Palmisano was eased out. He was replaced with Derek Cartright at my alma mater James Madison, a coach who proved he could win. I sent in my resume to the AD at JMU - but an 8-22 record failed to impress anyone.

(* * *)

The stipend began to make itself felt right in our own conference. The Sun Belt was paying. The Summit was not. And therefore, the coach of hated South Dakota State jumped ship. James Fillmore left a program that he had turned into a success in Brookings and went to Western Kentucky University. This was a real shocker, because Summit League fans felt that either Fillmore would stay with the Jacks until he resigned, or that he'd move up to a power conference.

But Western Kentucky? Really? WKU is an okay women's school - they were the Sun Belt Tournament champs and went to the NCAA tourney - but it wasn't like he was coaching at Kansas. Why leave SDSU for somewhere that's not so prominent. The rumor was that he wanted to go somewhere where his hands wouldn't be tied in recruiting.

He was replaced by Elizabeth Engstrom out of Portland State - the only openly gay coach in Division I women's basketball. I was shocked when I heard about it. South Dakota wasn't exactly welcoming to gays. Gay marriage was illegal in South Dakota and we were one of only four states in America that didn't have any openly gay government officials.

Oh, there was some wailing and gnashing of teeth from South Dakota conservatives, who are substantial and vociferous. However, they were basically preaching to the converted. No one's opinion was budged one inch by the arrival of a lesbian coach. Brookings was pretty much indifferent to the arrival of Engstrom. Sports talk radio tried to find the balance between having an opinion - one way or the other - that they could broadcast at 120 decibels but remain firmly indifferent to the sport in every other way.

I'll remember what one South Dakotan said in the newspaper. "I don't know what to think about this lesbian coach, but a lot of people on both sides sure like to get up on TV and tell everyone else what to think about it."

Another South Dakota said, "I'm just glad it got us on TV. We should hire more gay coaches if it gets the state this much attention. You'd think Jesus had come back the way people go on about it."

Of course, I was one of the first people the South Dakota media tried to call. I told them that all request for interviews had to go through the office of the athletic director.

Willie Burbank chuckled. "Mark, we've got the state's recruiting locked up now! Engstrom will be out at SDSU in two years. Donations will dry up. We'll take the lead in women's basketball! What parent is going to want to send her kid to SDSU?"

My response. "She took a nothing program at Portland State and turned it into a Big Sky powerhouse. Don't think it's going to be a walk in the park, Willie. You can say whatever you want about the Jacks, but the people that run SDSU ain't morons. Being a gay might make it easier to fire her when the time comes around, and she might draw more light that a women's coach would - but if she keeps taking the Jacks to the NCAA, then Brookings isn't going to care. My old coach said me, "Mark, winning heals all wounds. And championships are the ultimate rebuttal."

(* * *)

James Fillmore wasn't the only coach seeking warmer waters elsewhere. IPFW's coach moved on from being the winningest coach at IPFW to head the athletic department of the Chicago university he graduated from. He was replaced by an assistant coach from DePaul.

Only one year had passed. And now I was #7 in the conference in coach seniority. I wasn't even 30, but I was no longer the new guy in the Summit League.

(* * *)

May 2012

There was a lot going on around me in the world. The first thing, near the beginning of the month, was that the Shard of Glass London Bridge Tower opened in London, England.

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Yes, it doesn't look like much to American eyes. But this thing was 1,017 feet tall. It wasn't just the tallest building in the UK, it was the tallest buiding in Europena Union. The thing was supposedly reinforced just in case, you know, someone decided to drive a plane into it. Or something.

The French were already proposing a taller building. Russia's Mercury City Tower, topping out at 1,056 feet (roof) and 1,247 feet (spire) was already taller than the Shard. But the Shard's sleek design would soon become identified with London the way the London Eye is. People wondered if the major cities of Europe would be dotted with skycrapers the way Manhattan is.

Also that month, the Nauka Module docked with the International Space Station.

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The Nauka module is a multipurpose laboratory module, and when it was sent up it contained three Russian astronauts. Even though the International Space Station was technically "complete" with the addition of its robot arm earlier. However, the addition of both Nauka and the the Universal Docking Module (scheduled later by the Russians) might not have marked the completion of the ISS, but the addition of the Universal Docking Module had been proposed as the heart of the future replacement for the ISS - this lead many to conclude that the addition of Nauka finally completed the "old" space station.

But there was a bigger change coming our way. It hadn't hit the University of South Dakota...not yet, anyway.

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On May 26, 2012, Windows 8 was revealed to the world.

Windows 8 was a big step up in desktop PCs. All of the touch-and-move stuff you associated with your Android or iPhone? That had been built into the desktop screen, which was touch sensitive, so in a lot of ways it was like a giant iPad. This wasn't much of a selling point, though, as people didn't realy like moving things across the screen by having to reach over.

But even though that widget was a failure (and don't get me started about the screen keyboard), Windows 8 was a quantum step more reliable than its predecessors. The Windows Defender was a sort of built-in anti-virus architecture and the Blue Screen of Death was becoming a thing of the past. It wasn't perfect, but an entire subclass of hackers and script kiddies were permanently out of work, their old dependable tools unable to crack Windows 8. All of those sticky-fingered porn surfers were able to visit websites without infecting their computer with Russian-God-knows-what.

It was a great "cross platform" computer - whatever that means. (The joke was that the "eight" in Windows 8 was really "two Apples".) It booted up faster. But the really interesting app was the facial recognition feature.

The desktop version and hardware could notice through motion sensing whenever a person (or cat, in some funny instances) whenever a person was in a room and leave the sleep stage to start booting up. When you sat in front of the PC, two embedded cameras would scan the face of the user and match it up to the Windows 8 internal memory, and automatically log you in and bring up your gadgets or widgets or whatever. The idea was that people were tired of having to memorize a thousand passwords. "Your face is your password" was the slogan, although we weren't up to retinal scans just yet.

Of course, it didn't work perfectly. There were attempts to hack it through photographic trickery, but the multiple cameras built into the desktop unit make success at tricking the facial recognition rare enough for people to be confident in security. Facial recognition software had had a long history of failure at airports and public places, but the success of the Windows 8 facial recognition made people think..."hey...maybe facial recognition is the wave of the future".

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

Okay, yak yak, blah blah. A lot of stuff that went on in May 2012 is just fleshing out the fictional universe. There's not a lot of basketball going on here, except to indicate that yes, the 2011-12 season is definitely over. The seniors are gone now and it is a different world, although one still recognizable.

There really is a gay Division I women's basketball coach at Portland State. The game universe sent her to South Dakota State as soon as their coach fled. I don't know how the students at archrival USD are going to react when she shows up for that rivalry game.

We're one month away from the start of the recruiting period.

Next time: Making the 2012-13 schedule, and the players show up on campus for summer workouts.

Petrel · November 16, 2011

June 2012

Over the preceding year, we had been putting together a schedule for the 2012-13 season. This was done primarily from phone calls and messageboards. Most of this had been done in the Jones administration - but less so than previously. Last year didn't leave South Dakota much wiggle room, I had more room than before but remained constrained.

Even so, it looks like Jones's coaching staff and my staff had the same ideas - to coach weak teams up front and face progressively stronger competition as we approached the Summit League season. Willie Burbank had his doubts about this approach because it guaranteed that we'd be clobbered - we finished 1-11 last year in non-conference play. I liked it because it prepared us for the grueling aspects of Summit League play better than anything else I could think of.

The two games that dropped off the Summit League's schedule - those two against Oral Roberts, which had moved to the Southland Conference - gave me a little bit of extra flexibility. I had two targets that I thought might fit the bill - one on the road and one at home.

The road game would be against Nathan Padilla and the Connecticut Huskies. We would travel all the way to Storrs, Connecticut and face one of the greatest legends of women's basketball on his own home court. I didn't think much of our chances - I was no fool. But I felt that the trip we made last year to Tennessee helped, because it put a very hard to reach goal in front of our players - "we want the program at South Dakota to be just as good as the Lady Vols program". Going to Storrs would show us what a real women's basketball program was like.

The home game - that was a little difficult. We had a nice big gap of time after the finals of Fall Semester and I invited Boston College to come to Vermillion. The Eagles had finished 20-11 the previous year and had made it to the first round of the NCAA tournament. They had finished 11-3 in the ACC My hope was that we could somehow swing them to come to South Dakota.

No go. Definitely not in December. We kept negotiating with Boston College but at the same time we figured we'd try closer to home with a team that wouldn't be afraid of snowfall - the Cowgirls of Wyoming. Wyoming had finished the previous season 21-10 and 12-4 in the Mountain West but lost in the first round of the WNIT. But the Cowgirls gave us the snub. The impression we got was that a crappy team like South Dakota shouldn't invite a good team like Wyoming to the frozen wasteland of Vermillion.

After about three weeks of this, Sam Houston State chimed in, offering a home-and-home. The Bearkats were uncomfortably like us - 11-19 overall but 7-7 in conference play. By this time, I was sick of the bickering. Could they offer us a home-and-home where we played at our house first.

Yes, they replied, but it would have to be in January. I was so tired, I said, "Screw it, take up Sam Houston State on its offer." Granted, this game would fall in the middle of the Summit League season...I was just hoping that it wouldn't be on the same week as Oakland or SDSU or IPWF.

So now, presenting the non-conference schedule for the University of South Dakota for the 2012-13 season:

SOUTH DAKOTA COYOTES Schedule

 Date        Opponent                 Record  RPI  Result  Score  Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 11/17/12    Eastern Kentucky            0-0  320                       
 11/24/12    at Campbell                 0-0  304                       
 11/27/12    Murray State                0-0  295                       
 11/29/12    at Utah State               0-0  238                       
 12/01/12    Montana State               0-0  210                       
 12/06/12    at Hampton                  0-0  119                       
 12/08/12    at Washington               0-0   90                       
 12/13/12    at Brigham Young            0-0  111                       
 12/20/12    at #10 UCLA                 0-0   12                       
 12/22/12    at #20 Maryland             0-0   11                       
 12/27/12    at #5 Duke                  0-0    4                       
 12/29/12    at #4 Connecticut           0-0    6                                    
 01/16/13    Sam Houston State           0-0  330

Six of these teams had gone to the post-season the year before. Brigham Young got a WNIT invite as a representative of the West Coast Conference. Hampton had won the MEAC tourney and made it to the first round of the NCAAs. UCLA, Maryland, Duke and Connecticut had gone to the NCAA tournament with UConn making it all the way to the Final Four. Our strength of schedule would be great, if nothing else.

(* * *)

At the beginning of the month, the new freshmen would arrive on campus for the first time. Beacom Hall was offering a set of summer courses which gave us the excuse to bring everyone in. (In earlier years at USD, this wasn't the case.) We weren't allowed to scrimmage them in games but we could bring everyone in for a summer workout. We would get a good, close look at our new freshmen for the very first time.

Caroline Herrington: The first to arrive on campus, a transfer from Southside Community College in Virginia. A 6-5 center and now the tallest player on the team. I took one look at Herrington and said, "what have I got myself into?" because she looked like she had gained ten pounds in the off-season. Keeping her away from the training table was going to be the tough part of the summer, and Katie Ulmer and Raelynn Reavis would have to work her very hard. Her poor conditioning had kept her out of Division I for two years, and our job would be to pull a player out of all that fat.

It wasn't like she didn't know what she was supposed to be doing. Over the summer, I would catch snippets of conversations between her and other players. (On the bus rides, I'd catch more of it.) She was a self-appointed nutritional expert, and seemed to know what she was talking about. She could tell you how many carbs and fat grams were in a donut - she loved to preach to people about anything - but she couldn't stop from eating those donuts. She was an intelligent girl with no talent for self-discipline.

Abagail Merkle: Merkle was my other JUCO transfer, this time out of Arkansas Baptist. A 6-0 junior power forward, I could tell that she had some natural talent and real basketball skills - the ones gained from hard work. On the other hand, I don't think she had ever had any consistent coaching, and Arkansas Baptist was quite happy to just give the ball to Merkle and let her plow over the kinds of players who could only dream of playing Division I.

I watched her shoot free throws. Very consistent. She hit 23 free throws in a row and I was just amazed, her technique was perfect. She'd be a good player, but I doubted that she'd be a real leader because she was so freaking naive. For being in about 5,000 foster homes growing up Merkle was the opposite of a person wearing a tough emotional armor. Merkle was the target of all kinds of practical jokes because she had apparently experienced none of them. It wasn't mean-spirited, because everyone loved Abagail, even me. But she was living on some other planet, emotionally, somewhere out in happy-land.

Catalina Stewart: The first person I ever signed, a 6-0 shooting guard. That quiet persona I had experienced during recruiting her? She stayed quiet, and it was hard to get a peep out of her. "C'mon, Catalina, say something!" I'd be screaming and I'd get nothing out of her. Someone called her "Fluttershy" after some cartoon horse and it stuck. From then on out, it was Fluttershy.

I could tell that it would be hard for Catalina to make friends on this team. I felt that she was already starting to regress a little, and I needed to bring her out of her shell very cautiously or I'd lose her for good. I needed to assign her a friend of some kind. I asked Jillian Ho, and the first words out of her mouth were "She's too quiet!" Catalina would be another project.

Incidentally, I asked Catalina one day how I was able to sign her. Her parents pushed her into it. I asked why, and she said, "Well...you were so polite!"

Adalyn Matz: Matz was finally away from her family in Show Low. I didn't know if we had any comedians on the team, but if we did I knew they'd have a receptive audience. Everytime you heard Matz she was laughing at something anyone said and she had the personality of a goofy 13-year old girl, sometimes to my annoyance. Many is the time I'd have Adalyn running laps because she snickered whenever I blew my top at the players.

Matz would prove useful as a social organizer even if I doubted her usefulness as a 5-11 small forward. She was the one who always wanted to organize Halloween Parties or Movie Nights or whatever. I had to enact my very first "no texting" ban during practices because of her, because she was always messaging or calling or e-mailing someone.

Leah Alexander: I'll remember Leah Alexander's first practice like it was yesterday. She had a little bit of cachet coming from New York, even if it was Long Island and not New York City - the way she talked, it might has well have been the Bronx or Queens and in her fashion and speech she came off as the tough city girl. I thought I had found my leader right away. Leah was a 6-2 power forward, and I thought, "she's going to blow away the competition."

That was until the whistle blew. We had some box-out drills. This was a three player box out drill where a player had to defend the shot against one player and then switch to the box-out role on the rebound. It could get really nasty when players fought for the ball. You could tell who was physical and who wasn't.

And Leah was definitely soft. She'd flinch from contact after a couple of good, hard bumps. Caroline Herrington bounced her out of the lane wtih a few well placed hip checks and she was never the same after that.

It was going to be a lonnnnnng summer.

(* * *)

With the team together for the very first time in the beginning of June - with the seniors telling the freshmen and transfers phony horror stories and everyone trying to figure everyone else out, we finally addressed the team.

"Before we put you to work," I said, "you should probably want to know what you're going to be working on. The first thing that we're going to work on is defense. Offense sells tickets, defense wins championships. We play the simplest defense in basketball, the man-to-man. If you can't play man-to-man you have no business being in Division I basketball."

"The second thing I need to teach you is how to talk to each other. Last year, this squad was too ****ing quiet. If you can't talk, there is no way that you're going to be able to beat the screen. You have to call screens! We will not give up a single easy basket this year! Nothing will get you on my bad side faster than that - and you don't want to be on my bad side. If you don't have a hand up on a shot, you'll be running suicides. That's our team motto. Last year it was "NEVER AFRAID", and this year it's "NOTHING EASY".

"The third thing I need from you this year is something that only you can give. If you're not a family - it won't work. If you want to be mad at each other at what someone said or hold a grudge, you can go outside and do that. But not in here. Not during practice, not in the locker room, not on the road, and sure as hell not on the court. When the uniform goes on, the drama goes off."

"And now," I smiled, "it's time to teach you about The Crucible. We don't play pushovers at South Dakota. If you were looking to fatten up playing a bunch of chickens, think again."

I had Coach Ulmer pass out the schedule so everyone could look at it. "We have a seven game road trip in December. This is going to test just how mentally tough you are. And you can look at some of the names on that road trip. UCLA. Maryland. Duke. Connecticut. You think you're ready to play against the toughest teams in women's basketball without falling apart? You'll see things happen on a basketball court that you only saw watching the NBA."

Some of the upperclass veterans started chuckling. I jumped right on that. "Before you freshmen and transfers get intimidated, just remember that the people behind you laughing are full of shit - we were 1-11 last year non-conference." That shut them up. Then I grinned, "But they made up for it in the Summit League, sorta. They can tell you everything about league play. 7-11 is good, but we want to be better. Right, ladies?"

They nodded and answered. "Last year, we started on the foundation. This year, we start building the walls. There's no more off-season. We start individual workouts right now!" I blew my whistle. "Burn up the court!! Let's see how much endurance you've got...!"

(* * *)

Seniors

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#0 Jaylynn Adams - PF (5-11) - Hartford, SD (walk-on)

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: Inside shooting, jump shooting, 3-point shooting, offensive rbounding, post defense, perimeter defense, steals, blocks

Interests: Antiquing, retro culture

Major: Criminal justice

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#12 Ashley Brown - SF (6-1) - Fowler, MI

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: Jump shooting, 3-point shooting, offensive rebounding, post defense, blocks

Interests: Cuisine/cooking

Major: Marketing

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#3 Angelina "Angel" Choe - C (6-0) - Watertown, SD (walk-on)

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: Jump shooting, free throw shooting, 3-point shooting, passing, post defense, perimeter defense, steals

Interests: Dancing

Major: Criminal justice

Juniors

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#14 Jessica Bing - SG (5-10) - Zwickau, Germany

Strengths: vertical leap

Weaknesses: jump shooting, 3-point shooting, passing, dribbling, post defense, perimeter defense, steals, blocks

Interests: Blogging

Major: Marketing

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#1 Jillian Ho - PG (5-6) - Newell, SD

Strengths: quickness

Weaknesses: jump shooting, post defense, steals

Interests: Tapophilia (the enjoyment of cemetaries !)

Major: Economics

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#42 Analia Williams - C (6-3) - Canton, SD

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: 3-point shooting, passing, offensive rebounding, steals, blocks, stamina

Interests: Photography

Major: Marketing

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#33 Caroline Harrington - C (6-5) - Winchester, VA

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: Perimeter defense, steals, stamina

Interest: College football

Major: Communication

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#20 Abigail Merkle - PF (6-0) - Hot Springs, AR

Strengths: Free thrrow shooting

Weaknesses: Post defense, preimeter defense, stamina

Interest: Rap music

Major: English

Sophomores

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#34 Bella Grier - PG (5-9) - Gregory, SD

Strengths: quickness, vertical leap

Weaknesses: passing, offensive rebounding, defensive rebounding, post defense, perimeter defense, steals

Interest: Computer games (World of Warcraft)

Major: Social work

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#25 Anzhelika Bure - SF (5-9) - Omsk, Russia

Strengths: None

Weaknesses: ball handling, passing, offensive rebounding, pass defense, perimeter defense, stamina

Interest: Guitar

Major: English

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#50 Allison Riggle - PG (5-9) - North Sioux City, SD

Strengths: quickness

Weaknesses: inside shooting, offensive rebounding, defensive rebounding, pass defense, perimeter defense, steals, blocks, stamina

Interest: Video games

Major: Finance

Freshmen

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#35 Catalina Stewart - SG (6-0) - Valparaiso. IN

Strengths: Vertical leap

Weaknesses: Offensive rebounding

Interests: Basketball

Major: Undeclared

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#21 Adalyn Matz - SF (5-11) - Show Low, AZ

Strengths: None.

Weaknesses: Inside shooting, passing, offensive rebounding, pass defense, perimeter defense, steals, blocks, stamina

Interests: Texting, internet

Major: Undeclared

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#52 - Leah Alexander PF (6-2) - Mastic Beach, NY

Strengths: None.

Weaknesses: Inside shooting, ball handling, passing, steals, blocks

Interests: Pool playing

Major: Business/human resources

(* * *)

Over the summer, the University of North Dakota was forced to come to a decision regarding their mascot that had embroiled the university in turmoil for almost a decade.

For the longest time, the nickname of UND sports teams was the Fighting Sioux. In 2005, the NCAA placed the University of North Dakota on a list of teams with Native American nicknames that were perceived as objectionable. However, teams could get off the list by either:

a) changing their nickname, or

b) getting permission from a specifically-named tribal group to maintain the nickname. (This is why the Florida State Seminoles could keep their nickname.)

The NCAA determined that UND would have to get permission from each of the two major Sioux tribal groups in North Dakota. The Spirit Lake Sioux agreed to let UND use the nickname. The Standing Rock's tribal council refused.

To add to the acrimony:

a) a major donor plastered Fighting Sioux imagery all over the hockey arena he helped build for the school - you couldn't walk three feet without bumping into a Fighting Sioux logo. This was done to attempt to force the school to retain the logo by making it difficult to remove.

b) the North Dakota legislature, dominated by Republicans, decided to get involved in protecting the Fighting Sioux logo against "PC thuggery".

The NCAA had weapons of its own. They stated that as long as the Fighting Sioux retained their nickname, no NCAA championship events could be held at North Dakota - and the university had a top flight arena and a Final Four-contending hockey team that was the pride of the school. Furthermore, other schools began declining to schedule North Dakota, not wanting to offend their own student bodies or piss off the NCAA. (Rumor had it that the highly ranked Iowa women's basketball team cancelled a visit to UND for that very reason.)

Watching this with greater and greater unease was the Big Sky Conference, the newest home of North Dakota athletics. They wanted no part of this controversy, and it became very clear that the Big Sky was willing to use its clout. North Dakota was finally given a ultimatum - lose the nickname, or go back to being an independent.

North Dakota, finding damage to its sports programs inevitable, conceded. They scrubbed as much of the old logo from its arena as it could and the state legislature agreed to give up the fight.

This left the student body to determine a new nickname, and the university made it known to the students that it would be the administration that had final approval - a write-in campaign for the Fighting Sioux would be a futile and useless gesture. Therefore, the students and North Dakota hockey supporters found a way to tweak their university and the NCAA:

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/6200/ndsuhaki.gif

The new name became the North Dakota Suhaki. (Pronounced "Sioux Hockey".) And yes, Virginia, the suhaki are real animals. The best name is the Saiga antelope, which is also known as the suhak in Polish. And the plural of suhak is suhaki.

It solved the problem. It was a winter animal of Central Asia, proving a connection to the cold of North Dakota and the sport of hockey. It made for a cool-looking mascot. And it got as close to the line of tweaking those who hated the name of "Fighting Sioux".

All sides could live with the compromise. There were a few bitter Fighting Sioux holdouts, but after a few years, the logo of the Suhaki stood for North Dakota sports excellence - and moved a lot of sportswear merchandise.

June 2012

Two developments marked the middle of 2012.

The first was that Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee was finally celebrated. She crossed her 60th year of rule of the Commonwealth in February of 2012, but the official celebrations started in June. It started with the Queen attending the Epson Derby.

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For the rest of the week the Jubilee was celebrated with 1,000 boats from around the world making their way down the Thames, led by the Royal Barge. Thousands of beacons were lit up around the world, stabbing at the night sky in the Commonwealth countries. The whole thing was topped off by a massive concert at Buckingham Palace.

It was called the "Party of the Century", even though there were some criticisms that the event was "not British enough".

But while the Brits were celebrating the Queen, Americans were looking forward to something...from Japan.

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/710/supermariobroswiiuoxcgn.jpg

The Nintendo Wii U was finally released to the public. Among the features it had was a handheld controller where one could either transmit the game to the television set or to the controller...which had a screen of its own. The new controller was motion sensitive and cold work in concert with the televised image, showing a view from two different perspectives.

The general consenus from hardcore gamers was that it didn't bring all that much to the Wii. "It's just a Wii with a larger controller," gamers complained. But the Wii U really wasn't built for hardcore gamers. Nintendo knew that hardcore gamers were only a segment of the potential market; the non-gamers were a legitimate market that Nintendo wished to corner. It was designed to be cheap compared to the upgrades scheduled by its competitors, XBox and Playstation.

All I knew is that people were arguing about this a lot. I was too busy to play computer games. I had a team to run.

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

And June is out of the way. Up next will be July, where we actually start recruiting for the 2012-13 season. I thought I'd have a lot of comments to make here, but I guess not, or maybe I just forgot them.

sportsfanmas · November 16, 2011

good stuff petrel. I send you a private message about a project I have going on, seeing if you're interested. I like the womens dynasty, good work.

Petrel · November 19, 2011

July 2011

Just before the beginning of July, the four coaches of the women's program at the University of South Dakota - me (head coach Mark Hawkins), recruiting coordinator Caitlyn Williams, assistant head coach Katie Ulmer and scouting coach Raelynn Reavis were watching film of Sofia Owens, a soon-to-be senior out of Bloomington High School South in Bloomington, Indiana.

At 6-10, she was head and shoulders above the rest of the players on the court, quite literally. The gave her some amazing statistics, like a 60.8 percent shooting percentage. "Look at her back up to the basket like Shaq," Williams said. "There's no one that can stop her."

"Not the fastest player I've seen out there," Reavis said. "But better than anything that we've got."

"Watch this," I said, "here it comes."

Bloomington managed to get the ball on a breakaway to Owens, who trotted down court and tried a dunk. It was sort of an anemic-looking dunk - not the kind that would win her the NBA Slam Dunk Challenge - but it definitely counted as a dunk.

"Height-assisted," Ulmer scoffed. "If she wasn't 6-10 that wouldn't have been no dunk."

"There are a lot of NBA losers at 6-10 who can dunk," Reavis said, "but no one's ever heard of them. A 6-10 women's player who can dunk? There should be a lot of interest."

"That's just it," I said. "The big schools are shying off - even though Louisville is interested, the other schools are local. Indiana. Indiana State. Butler. IUPUI. I think that South Dakota has as much right to call itself a local school as all of the others.."

"So you're going after Owens?" Williams said.

We were sitting in what I called the "War Room", a room that had nothing but whiteboards in it and four chairs, and a room to which only Williams and I (and the facilities physical plant) had the key. On one of the whiteboards was a list of names I had added.

"Guys," I said. "We're in an interesting situation here. Last year, we were scrambling to fill six open slots on this team. This year, we only have two open slots, and they're at the same position - power forward. But our recruiting budget is the same as in the previous year. This gives us a lot of freedom, something we didn't have last year."

"There are two philosophies in recruiting," I said. "At least, two philosophies for a school like South Dakota. The first is to swing for the fences and try to get the best we can - !"

" - like Zoe McHale," Williams said.

"Don't even remind me of Zoe McHale. She's dead to me. We spent a month's worth of money chasing after her." I laughed. "We won't even mention Zoe McHale's name again. (McHale had gone to Florida A&M.) The other philosophy is to think small and try to get what you can get. We were okay on that last season. We got some players who can contribute, but I don't think they're going to be even second-team Summit League."

"Two philosophies," I said, "and two positions to fill. So we're going to split our thinking. For the first position, we're going to try to go all-out and snag a 3-star player or better. We are going to walk up to the plate and swing for the home run. We are going to camp in this girl's yard and we are not going to let the big dogs scare us out of it."

"For the second position," I continued, "we'll play it much safer. We'll try to get the kind of player that South Dakota traditionally gets. Last year, waiting until April to sign the last of our players was nerve-racking, and we didn't succeed."

"So Sofia Owens is our 3-star we want to get?" Williams asked.

"You got it," I said. "That's our target. At ESPN Rise (which had replaced Hoopgurlz) the only schools that have mentioned any kind of interest in her are the ones I mentioned - a bunch of Indiana schools, basically. If you're a 6-10 young woman who averages 20.5 ppg and 9.7 rpg, you're going to get attention. But I want her to know that there's a whole world outside of Indiana."

"Wouldn't she be an automatic 'get' for Indiana?" Coach Reavis asked.

"Who knows?" I said. "Maybe she doesn't want to go to Indiana! Those are the schools that are interested in her...we don't know if she's interested back. Maybe she doesn't like her fellow Hoosiers. Oh, and by the way? We're offering her a scholarship right away, sight-unseen. We need to get our feet in the door, particularly without that $3000 stipend other conferences can offer."

"Now before we all start thinking about recruiting, we're going to do things a little differently this year. I spent some time this morning talking to Coach Acevedo and Willie Burbank and what we're going to do is to license the King Kong Recruiting System for the women's team at USD. They just call it 'Kong'. What it is? It's a computerized database where we are going to store all of our recruiting information."

"No more Excel spreadsheets," I said. "No more handwritten notes. No more paper phone logs. If it is done - then it's going to be done on Kong. We're going fully computerized this year. Everything we write down is going to be available to the entire coaching staff."

"What the hell?" Coach Williams said. "Mark, you should have told me! All of my stuff is hand written!"

"Maybe I should have told you first," I said. "But everyone on this staff has something to do with recruiting. I'm hoping sometime in the future to be able to get a graduate assistant, and they're going to have to make phone calls and keep phone logs. It makes no sense to have a hundred pieces of paper scattered all over the place. We need it all at one point."

Caitlyn looked mad, madder than I think I had ever seen her. "What are we going to do on the road? We'll just have to print that stuff out."

"Willie Burbank is purchasing iPads for the entire coaching staff. Kong can be accessed from an iPad, laptop, phone, whatever. We don't need to be here to use it."

"Right, but I'd still have to type everything I've got! That's hours of work!"

"Nothing changes there. We only type stuff in going forward."

"I'm not a great typist! And I don't want to have to learn some new computer system."

"Caitlyn?" I asked. "Are you just going to drag your feet on this? This is done. We're doing it."

Caitlyn Wiliams didn't take her eyes off me for five seconds. She just picked up her recruiting folder and stormed out of the room.

Raelynn and Katie were shocked. I don't think either had seen Caitlyn Williams so much as say an unkind word or do anything that would indicate any kind of displeasure at anyone. They looked at each other, and then at me.

"Well," I said. "I hope I'll still have at least two coaches by the time today is over."

(* * *)

Caitlyn came back later that day. I barely got a sentence out of her for two weeks, until she returned to normal. "I was about to turn in my resignation that day," she said. "I felt like I was ambushed." Caitlyn, however, overcame her computer phobia and was forced to follow Kong's organizational scheme. I think it made things better, although there was some time delay sometimes between Williams making a call and writing it up and we were forced to endure Coach Williams's misspellings. Williams's laxity with phone logs made me worry that someday we'd run afoul of NCAA compliance.

(* * *)

As it turned out, putting together the list of three-star players was a lot harder than putting together the list of players we thought we could automatically "get". One problem was free-throw shooting. Finding a 70 percent free throw shooter at the post position was turning out to be impossible; I was going to have to learn to be happy with 60+ percent.

There were some really tall women out there as recruits, a change from previous years. You'd be lucky in the old days to find a women's player at 6-8 or taller; there were quite literally a handful of those players. But this year there were literally hundreds of players - it was an explosion in height that left experts flabbergasted!

Part of it was due to the fact that the state of medical technology made it possible for tall women to live normal lives. By "tall women" I don't mean 5-10, I mean heights above 6-5. Good medical care had allowed these women to remain healthy and avoid the serious medical complications that came from increased height.

The second reason is that with the increase of resources devoted to women's college basketball, tall women were no longer overlooked (so to speak) by college coaches. Coaches were becoming less and less likely to take "no" for an answer and there was a need for tall women.

The third reason was that this increase in resources made it more likely that a tall woman would consider athletics as a career. In basketball, they had a natural advantage and unlike in previous decades, there was the opportunity to make money in either the WNBA or in Euroball.

Of the twelve women we planned to evaluate in the month of July, every single one of them was 6-5 or above. This year, I'd rely more strongly on the assessments from the scouting services we had purchased until I could see these women up close and personal.

One of them intrigued me, the 6-9 Robert Holloway out of Rosepine High School. Her given name was "Roberta" but she decided that she was going to be "Robert" and that was that. She looked like a Robert Holloway, bearing the tattoos and attitude to go with the 14.3 ppg and 10.2 rebounds per game that made her All-State in Louisiana.

This brings me to an interesting side bar: tattoos. In men's college basketball, they're ubiquitous - you'd have to look long and hard in some schools to find a male athlete that didn't wear tats, sometimes a whole sleeve full. In women's basketball, tattoos weren't so easy to find.

Part of it might have been gender-related - maybe women didn't like/need tattoos as much as men did. On the other hand, a lot of schools - Nathan Padilla up at Connecticut, for example - stayed away from recruiting girls with "body art". (Then again, he had his pick of recruits, so he could afford to be fussy.) Other schools made it a rule that tattoos couldn't be seen in public - they had to be covered with a bandage, or a stocking, or something.

I never got into tattoos and I was one of the few pro (or semi-pro) players that didn't have a single tat. My teammates teased me for it - Powerhouse Pondexter gave me a particularly hard time - but my attitude was, "I don't want to wear the same shirt for the rest of my life." There's a reason they put erasers on pencils, you know.

Even so, Robert Holloway was a piece of work. They were going to have to have her wear a burka if they wanted to cover up her body art. What did I think? I thought that I had no time to be the body art police. As far as I knew, the Athletic Department had no policy. Could tattoos be a red flag? Sure, if they came with a "**** you" attitude. I didn't need that kind of attitude on the court; let someone else deal with the primadonnas. But if it was just about artistic expression, then as long as they gave 110 percent on the court and could be coached...I really didn't care.

(* * *)

That July we received some shocking news out of Oklahoma State. Joseph Hysell, a man who had been a coach at Oklahoma State for seven year, died in a plane crash on the way to a recruiting trip to an AAU game in Arkansas.

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His recruiting coordinator was killed as well as the pilot of the aircraft - an 83-year old Oklahoma state senator - and the pilot's wife. Hysell had signed a contract extension through June 2017.

This was the second time in just over a decade that Oklahoma State suffered a tragedy with its basketball program. In January 2001, there was a crash that killed ten people affiliated with the Oklahoma State men's team.

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The men's basketball memorial statue at the Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

After that crash, it was required that all planes used by any team undergo a safety check before take off but recruiting trips were exempt from those rules.

The news shocked a lot of people in women's basketball. Because women's basketball has a smaller profile than men's basketball, there is more of a feeling of being in a family in this sport, and losing Hysell was like losing a family member. I can't imagine how his family and his players must feel. I never had a chance to play against him, but in some strange way, I feel the loss.

(* * *)

July 2012

On July 27, the opening ceremonies for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games were held in London, England.

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The London Olympic Aquatic Center.

With the world's economy more or less in the toilet, the London Olympic Games were a target for both protestors and anti-protestors. Some Londoners didn't want the Olympics at all. Other forces, like Occupy London/Occupy UK wanted to bring attention to the problems of economic injustice.

Meanwhile, the anti-protestors were doing everything they could to keep whom they considered belligerents "out of sight, out of mind", attempting to cordon off as much of the games from the protestors as they could while at the same time keeping them open to the public and the media. The British media didn't help, trying to hype up the threats of terrorist attack either from black-masked anarchist protestors or turbaned terrorist suicide bombers, whichever would sell more papers on any given day. (The numbers hyped up for the suicide bombers were as high as 200 from the Daily Mail.)

Suffice it to say the level of security was a bit ludicrous. On the other hand, the world got to see the new construction projects which were timed for the Olympics to come to fruition.

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Crossrail, a major rail network under London, was finally completed, linking Heathrow Airport by rail with most of London for the very first time.

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

When modifying my women's basketball universe, I created a new heights.ini file to reflect female height vs. male height. When I create my version 2 of the women's basketball mod pack - and it is coming - I'll be adjusting the heights downward. Until then, we'll just go with the flow when it comes to all of these 6-6+ women's basketball players.

The King Kong Recruiting System is fictional. I promise.

Regarding Robert Holloway - that's the name the names file generated and I'm sticking to it!

I attempted to address Kurt Budke's death in-game in the most tasteful way I could think of.

Petrel · December 4, 2011

August 2012

It was August, and i was glad to get back home. Most of July had been spent on the road evaluating players, but the AAU calendar seemed to come to a halt in August. Most AAU programs were trying to figure out which players they were going to move to their Elite Teams. All of the various AAU championshps had been determined. All of the exposure camps for the senior classes has taken place.

August was supposed to be the time when kids were talking to coaches. With the new NCAA recruiting rules going into effect in 2013, this would change. There had been a problem with the girls basketball calendar. The way things had gone - in 2012 for example - was like this.

July: AAU Ball and Exposure Camps

August: AAU Ball over, Exposure Camps over - players field calls and coaches take home visits

September: School starts, players take campus visits

October: campus visits continue

November: earliest to sign National Letter of Intent

The problem was that most power schools didn't want to wait until November to sign their five-star players. They wanted them signed now, as in "yesterday". Frankly, they wanted their players wrapped up by August at the latest. The campus visit was to be a formality and the players were getting pressured in a lot of ways.

For example, a player could only take five official visits, but she could take as many "unofficial visits" as she wanted to. An unofficial visit is like an official visit - except that the player/player's family is paying for it. In the men's game, you could drive a truck through the abuses of unofficial visits. The NCAA could audit a school's finances, but how were they going to audit a family's? Money somehow "found" its way to a player and a player's entire family would travel from Florida to California on first-class air mysteriously, despite not having enough cash to buy a pot to piss in.

This hadn't started happening in the women's game - not yet, anyway. But there was more pressure on players who lived close to a university to make unofficial visits.

The second problem was "deadlining". I know Nathan Padilla at Connecticut and Sloane Hunt over at Stanford were using it. Basically, you told the recruit, "We think there are five point guards who can play at Connecticut. You're one of them. But we're going to sign the first one that commits!" Suddenly in July, you had to make a decision on a school in days instead of months, lest someone jump ahead of you in line. (Did South Dakota deadline? Ha! We didn't have the status to deadline in 2012-13!)

But things were changing. Since June 15th, we had the right to text message kids as early as sophomores and to make unlimited use of social media. We could make unlimited calls now as well. This was an attempt to wrestle with the factors mentioned above. If the big powers were going to try to secure their top recruits months in advance, other universities needed the advantage of that months in advance head start.

We weren't at the point where we could start chasing sophomores. Not yet. We still needed the approval of getting a graduate assistant who could take some of the recruiting load off of our backs - to do the scut work for us. I suspected at some point we'd be recruiting from the embryo.

(* * *)

By August, I knew a lot about Sofia Owens, our blue-chip power forward that was one of our major targets. She could shoot - you have to shoot to score 20.5 points per game. I thought she was deserving of her high status.

Other parts of her game bothered me. She was generally the go-to person at her high school in Indiana and was the kind of person who was smart enough to avoid the obvious sideline traps and double-teams. But when she had to pass out of a double-team, she had a lot of trouble finding the open man - those balls went right into the third row. Furthermore, for a power forward she had an awful sense of timing when it came to defending - she was not very quick and didn't have the kind of shot-blocking skills I'd like to see in a post.

Even so, there were a lot of advantages. Owens was smart and with a 1200 PSAT I'd never have to worry about her on a weekend - she'd be in front of a book somewhere. Williams liked talking to her and the coaches loved to chat about how an Owens would transform our post game.

Then, on August 7th, we got word that Middle Tennessee State had made a written offer. It was about the worst news we could. She had five dream schools listed at ESPN Rise, and of the five MTSU was the dreamiest in terms of status. Middle Tennessee State walked right into the casino, and threw a big stack of hundreds right on the roulette wheel. We now had a top rank competitor.

The coaches held an emergency meeting right afterwards. "Well," I said, "the plan of us getting a big blue chipper hit a fire hydrant."

"I think we primed Owens," Williams moaned. "Once we sent her that written offer of a scholly, MTSU said, "oh, crap, we'd better answer that right away". It didn't scare them away at all."

"At least we know where we stand," Katie Ulmer said. "Sort of. We didn't even get a mention on ESPN Rise."

"If we can get Owens it's a huge win for our team," I said.

Raelynn Reavis spoke up. "Mark, if it looks bad for Owens I want to suggest that girl out of Texas, Kendall Henning. Her ball handling's a little weak."

" - can't play no defense," Ulmer said.

"Maybe, but she blocks about two to three shots a game. She's 6-7. She sends those shots to Jupiter."

"And when she doesn't block them, they go right in the basket," Williams said. "Besides, Mark, you want to sign another JUCO? We're going to get a reputation as a school that can't recruit."

"There are worse fates in the world," I said. "You have a lot of reason to think that JUCO players can handle the academics. They've got reason to work hard."

"And they shorten your recruiting cycle," Williams said. "You really want a replay of last year?"

(The short answer was "no".) "I want to point out Breanna Vanscoy," Reavis said.

I knew Breanna Vanscoy was coming. Vanscoy was a 6-7 All-State power forward out of North Ridgeville High School. I had seen her and I had requested game footage - after about two weeks, her high school finally deigned to send me some. By this time, the other coaches had seen what I was looking at.

"Vanscoy is going to be a lot better than Owens," Williams said. "She could start for us right now, and she's got offers from Cleveland State and Duquesne. If you want to compete with a school that's out of your league, I'd rather take my chances with Cleveland State and Duquesne than with Middle Tennessee State."

"Yeah," I said, "but the whole point of this was to put part of our eggs in one basket. We can't get scared now. Furthermore, all we know is that Cleveland State and Duquesne are interested now. We don't know about next week. We don't know if, say, Cincinnati and Ohio State will be interested the week after that. Would I love Vanscoy? Hell yeah. Am I going after Vanscoy if Owens stiff-arms us? Definitely. Caitlyn, is Owens giving us the cold shoulder yet?"

"No," Williams said. "I don't have any sign that she's not keeping her options open. I know that we're not one of her favorite schools, but she's said nothing about us having no chance."

"Then we stick with Owens. It's too soon in the game to panic. I'll be visiting this month and I'll see for myself. Now...I want to talk about Aaliyah Gray."

We had split our recruiting focus into two categories of players: "achievable dream players" (Owens) and "low hanging fruit". Gray was of the low hanging fruit variety. She had high interest in South Dakota, she had returned our questionnaires from a year earlier. "Caitlyn, how is Gray?"

"She's got offers from Brigham Young...and Denver. I just heard about the Denver offer. I expect Colorado and Northern Colorado will jump into the mix."

This was worse news than Owens and Middle Tennessee. We had seen her play and liked what we saw. But others had seen her play. I could afford to swing and miss on Owens, but not on Gray. "Back off from Gray," I said. "We'll have to find someone else interested in South Dakota."

"We're not having much luck," Caitlyn said.

I stared at her. "Look harder," I said.

(* * *)

We continued to evaluate players - if we didn't have the AAU to look at, we could always request film (which had to be paid for). We finished our list of local players - no one really far away - that we thought might show an interest in South Dakota.

In the meantime, we had Sofia Owens to worry about. For the first time in my brief career, we would tag-team Sofia Owens - both Caitlyn Williams and myself would be coming to her home in Bloomington, Indiana.

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Clearly, the Owenses were a very well off family, the kind of family that could just pay for a top-flight education at any American university - probably even Harvard or Yale if it came down to it. Mr. Owens was the head of a bank loan division of some kind and Mrs. Owens was some sort of management expert and executive.

We suspected strongly that they were both graduates of Indiana. What gave it away? Basically, the fact that the living room was sort of an open study area for Mr. Owens (his desk was there) and there was an IU banner, an IU wastepaper basket, and photographs of Bob Knight and other great personages and moments of Indiana University sports. As for the family, there were one older son who was a IU grad who tried to walk on at Indiana, as well as a younger son who had just turned 13.

"Now, of course, Coach Hawkins we'd love it if Sofia got an offer from Indiana," Mr. Owens said, "but we're going to leave this up to Sofia. We know that South Dakota is in the Summer League and that one of the teams of the League is in Indianapolis, which would give us a chance to see Sophia at least once a year."

Mr. Owens got a plus in my book for knowing IUPUI was in our league, but he got a minus because he called it the "Summer League" eighty percent of the time. The good thing about Mr. and Mrs. Owens is that even though they were watching, they weren't directing. "This is going to be Sofia's choice," Mrs. Owens said.

As for Sofia herself, she was quiet, the smart kind of quiet. She had the security of having an offer from MTSU on the table and she knew that she was in the driver's seat. "Has Indiana made an offer to you?" was my first question.

"I've talked with Indiana," she said, "but they don't really seem to be serious. I keep asking about if they want to make a scholarship offer and they keep telling me that 'it's too early in the process'. I want to go to a school that really wants me."

"Sofia, there should be no question about that," I said. I mentioned that this was the first time I had made a trip with an assistant coach. "During this presentation, I want to underline one point - that South Dakota cares about your future and we want to put you into a position where you can have immediate success as a Coyote."

"I have some very important questions," she said. "What are your admission requirements for an athlete?"

"I'm always glad to get such great questions, particularly when I can answer them," I said, and everyone laughed. (Thank God.) "You need one of three things. You need a SAT verbal/math of 990 or above. You need a GPA of 2.6 on a 4.0 scale over all your courses, not just your core. You need to graduate in the top 50 percent of your class. There are specific high school coursework requirements, but I've seen your transcripts and you'll have no trouble getting into South Dakota. You could enter with any one of the "three prongs"."

"I want to major in computer science," she said. "Is this major going to interfere with my schedule?"

Oh, brother. I knew that it would. It looked like she was serious about that computer science major. "Right now, we have athletes with multiple majors. We work around the schedules of our various players. Sometimes, that leaves us short in practices - someone will have a lab that we can't work around. Myself - I'd like to have a practice that had everyone in it. But academics comes first at USD."

(Translation: if Sonia applied to USD, I'd deal with her computer science major dreams. I'd stomach her not being available at certain practices.)

She nodded. She asked what people were majoring in (Caitlyn saved my bacon on that one; she knew everyone's major.) We talked about our full-time academic adviser. "We had an academic success rate of 93 percent when I came on as head coach. This is exactly where I want this program to be. The federal rate for a Division II school - which is what we used to be - is only 50 percent. All across the board, in any sport, we match favorably against any power conference or mid-major you can think of."

All of her questions were about academics. I got the impression that Sonia suspected that USD was sub-par academically. Without a word, we both managed to restructure our presentation with a focus on academic life at USD.

We spent 2 1/2 hours with the Owenses. They were pleasant people. Sofia had one last question for us. "Oh, Coach...do you waive the application fee for athletes?"

I held my tongue. The application fee at USD was $20. The Owenses could find $20 in the loose change of their couch. "Well...you'd have to let us know. You'd submit a request for a fee waiver and you'd either send the Athletics Department a duplicate copy or cc e-mail so that they know about it. We'd make a call to the Office of Admissions and they'd waive the fee."

As we walked out the door of the Owenses mansion, I turned to Caitlyn and whispered, "Do you believe that?"

"Yeah, no kidding," she said. "Wanting to save $20. Coach, what do you think?"

"She asks all the right questions, but she's got a lot of leverage. She can go anywhere she wants to go. I can't believe she was nickel and diming us on a admissions fee. Given what I saw in the house, if you hear that Indiana is going to make an offer, we're going to have to withdraw. We cannot beat the Hoosiers, no way no how."

(* * *)

August 2012

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games closed in London, England.

The United States walked away with the most gold medals with 90 medals in total. But the Chinese were right behind us, taking 88 total medals (even though America won the most gold medals). It was a switch from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where China won the most gold and America won the most medals.

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The mascot, however, was not a success.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Republican Party held its Nominating Convention in Tampa, Florida. There was very little drama with the nomination a foregone conclusion. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, became the first Mormon ever to be nominated for president by a major political party.

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Romney's closest competitor was former Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich, the candidate about whom the "Not Romney" forces had coalesced. Gingrich had strong showings in the South, picking up several states on Super Tuesday - but Romney knew that the game wasn't about winning primaries, it was about winning delegates. (Which was Obama's strategy four years earlier.)

The Not Romney forces could never unite, each committed to their pet candidate and each eschewing any kind of compromise. Gingrich tried to broker a deal - he even reached out to Sarah Palin's fans and worked very hard to put Palin in some sort of role on Romney's ticket, making it a public issue and hammering Romney on the podium for it. (The goal? To force Romney to publicly reject Palin and therefore bring all of Palin's supporters into the Gingrich camp.)

Romney's camp deferred. They knew that Gingrich would be his own worst enemy. When a physician murdered one of his patients in one of those convoluted cases that had the talking heads of Court TV fuming, Newt chimed in by making a similarly convoluted argument that Obamacare had emboldened the physician to conclude that "human life was just a number on a balance sheet". His comments about Obama needing to be "slapped down to earth" got blogs buzzing but only helped Romney and Obama in the end.

Even so, Gingrich went down fighting. He did not concede, he merely "ended the pre-convention phase of his campaign". Attempts to get first himself, then Palin on the vice-presidential ticket ended in failure. (Gingrich had little love for Palin, it was all about power and positioning.)

"How can a supposed intellectual," Romney asked in what for him was a hard-hitting attack, "open his mouth without thinking again and again and again?"

The only suspense left was who would be named a candidate for Vice-President. Romney's camp confounded conventional wisdom by picking Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, a Hispanic-American.

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Sandoval had been squarely in the Rick Perry camp. (The GOP thought Rick Perry would be the key to securing Hispanic votes that Obama had taken from them; Romney's camp simply cut out the middleman.) Stephen Colbert called Romney and Sandoval "The Toothpaste Twins"; the name stuck.

Despite the circus behind him, it looked like Romney had done will for himself. At the end of the convention, he had a four percent lead over Obama.

(* * *)

In August of 2012, a major breakthrough had come through for the treatment of baldness. Allergan, the company that brought America Botox had worked out their hurdles in testing their eyelash-lengthening medication (Latisse) as a cure for baldness.

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A satisfied customer?

The new drug - which was being called Fronoxidil or Frotop, depending on the market, in order not to dilute the Latisse brandname - was not only effective in growing hair on parts of the scalp where it was missing, but was "much more effective than Rogaine", as the commercials would say. The goal was to get bald men known for being reallly bald - Dick Vitale, Marv Alpert, William Shatner - to use the product.

Shatner put them over the top. The notoriously vain actor agreed to use the stuff. He showed up on the commercial with real hair - granted, it looked like he had a burr haircut but no one could deny that it was real hair, and that there would be more of it soon. There was a rush of prescriptions for "medical necessity" of one sort or another.

Dick Vitale joked about all of the money he had passed up. "Do I regret not being in the commercials? My dome is like money in the bank! This head is so pretty! Why cover it up? No way, ba-BEE!!"

With the arrival of Frotop, male baldness became a thing of the past. (Save for those contrarians who made the deliberate choice to be bald - they would be seen as sort of cool in the decades to come.) Those women suffering from alopecia or males suffering from teenage onset of severe male pattern baldness had hope at last. And Allergan made a mint.

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

Back on the wagon again, obviously. We're still three game months from some actual, you know, basketball. I hope you can wait through these little tales until then.

Petrel · December 12, 2011

September 2012

September 2012 is very weird to write about. I have this feeling that I have to be very careful with what I say, that my words will end up in some history book and used as some statement of absolute fact of what happened on the 18th. But I'll try to explain as best I can.

In the early part of September, the South Dakota women's basketball team had two goals - to prepare the Coyotes for their next season in the Summit League and to recruit two players that could contribute in the 2013-14 season. We were keeping our eyes on Sofia Owens, continuing to call and cajole her towards signing with South Dakota. AT the same time, the Fall Semester had started at USD and our players now had to deal with the added challenge of classes. We had two JUCO transfers and it would be interesting to see how they handled the academics.

After looking for signs and portents of Owens's interest (or lack of it) towards South Dakota, I got a call from Raelynn Reavis on September 1st.

"Mark, they've updated Sofia Owen's page on ESPN Rise! Take a look at it!"

Sofia had updated her Top School list. It was now shrunk down to three schools.

Top Schools: Middle Tennessee, Western Kentucky, South Dakota.

WHOA! We were now a "Top School"! But that meant nothing. We learned something from reading her Rise profile that we had not read before, namely that Western Kentucky had made a written offer.

"...new coach James Fillmore of the Lady Toppers thinks that Owens will be a 'real go-getter' and is looking forward to taking the Toppers back to the NCAA Tourney after Western Kentucky won the Sun Belt...."

James Fillmore. The former coach of South Dakota State. I still couldn't get away from the damned Jackrabbits, even when Fillmore jumped ship.

"Raelynn, the iron is hot. Let's bring Sofia on campus so she can see what South Dakota basketball is all about! Let's seal the deal this month" I texted Caitlyn Williams that she should bring Sofia and her parents to Vermillion.

Caitlyn called me back. "I thought your plan was to go back to Bloomington."

"We are. We're going to blow another month's worth of budget. It's worth it. A school like USD doesn't get the attention of a player like Sofia Owens. Zoe McHale wasn't worth the money, but Sofia Owens is."

(* * *)

Also at the beginning of the month we received the Summit League schedule for the coming year:

SOUTH DAKOTA COYOTES Schedule

 Date        Opponent                 Record  RPI  Result  Score  Record
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 11/17/12    Eastern Kentucky            0-0  320                       
 11/24/12    at Campbell                 0-0  304                       
 11/27/12    Murray State                0-0  295                       
 11/29/12    at Utah State               0-0  238                       
 12/01/12    Montana State               0-0  210                       
 12/06/12    at Hampton                  0-0  119                       
 12/08/12    at Washington               0-0   90                       
 12/13/12    at Brigham Young            0-0  111                       
 12/20/12    at UCLA                   0-0   12                       
 12/22/12    at Maryland               0-0   11                       
 12/27/12    at Duke                    0-0    4                       
 12/29/12    at Connecticut             0-0    6                       
 01/03/13    UMKC                        0-0  309                       
 01/05/13    at Western Illinois         0-0  339                       
 01/10/13    North Dakota State          0-0  194                       
 01/12/13    at IUPUI                    0-0  307                       
 01/16/13    Sam Houston State           0-0  330                       
 01/19/13    South Dakota State          0-0  103                       
 01/22/13    at Oakland                  0-0   81                       
 01/26/13    IPFW                        0-0  164                       
 01/29/13    at Nebraska-Omaha           0-0  305                       
 02/02/13    at UMKC                     0-0  309                       
 02/05/13    Western Illinois            0-0  339                       
 02/09/13    at North Dakota State       0-0  194                       
 02/14/13    IUPUI                       0-0  307                       
 02/21/13    at South Dakota State       0-0  103                       
 02/23/13    Oakland                     0-0   81                       
 02/28/13    at IPFW                     0-0  164                       
 03/02/13    Nebraska-Omaha              0-0  305

Looking at the schedule, it looked like my decision to a home-and-away with Sam Houston State had come back to bite me in the behind. Three days after that game, we'd play our archrival South Dakota State at the DakotaDome. How much rest we'd get it that January was beyond me.

We were all over the place in our conference schedule. No long home stands and no long away stretches in conference. I didn't know if that was a plus or a minus.

As far I could tell, there were four also-ran teams in the Summit League - Western Illinois, UMKC, IUPUI, and Nebraska-Omaha. If we were fortunate - very fortunate - we could sweep all of those teams and finish with an 8-8 record in the Summit League. (Thank you, Oral Roberts, for leaving the league.) Last year we were 5-3 against those four teams, including an embarrassing loss to Western Illinois that I won't soon forget. If we were better, we'd finish maybe 6-2.

We might get lucky and pick off a win from either IPFW, North Dakota State, Oakland, or South Dakota State. (A win against the Jacks would be worth a lot to the backers of Yote sports.) Right now, however, Willie Burbank's goal of us finishing at 8-8 in the conference seemed about as likely as jumping to the moon.

(* * *)

Of course, there was still the rest of our list to worry about. We had to worry about evaluating the players that we didn't get evaluated, but were just about to sum up our evaluations. We had tons of film and not much time to look at it.

One part of recruiting you have to worry about is when players seem to lose interest. On Kong (our computerized recruiting system) there's a check list that has be filled out on every recruiting call. One of the check-marks is "recruit interest level." A small checklist appears on the screen during the call, with what it calls "Pluses" and "Minuses".

MINUSES

() Recruit does not communicate high school successes.

() Recruit does not take initiative on call backs. (Before unlimited contact period.)

() Recruit seems actively resistant to talk on phone. (Versus shyness.)

() Recruit declines to talk on phone (non-emergency).

() Recruit fails to retain information from previous calls.

These minuses are red flags for diminished interest, and we charted them with numerical precision. Each recruit had a little numerical ranking that indicated their overall interest. Remember the two lists of recruits we have? The superrecruits and the "good enoughs?" We had a couple of the superrecruits hit some red flags, but that's to be expected. With all the effort put into recruiting Sofia Owens, that left less effort for our Top Ten. We would just have to make the calls and deal with their disinterest.

I suspected Cherish Rampage and Nadia Mansfield really didn't want us to call but had not shut the door on us. There's a saying that "you'll never be as loved as much as when you're recruited". Some players have no intention of signing with you, they just want their ego stroked. That was fine. At least I had them on the phone. When they say "stop calling me" is when I worry.

As for our other list, we had a lot of people that had made us their favorite school after we started calling them - but we were their only favorite. The only person we dropped off that list was Elizabeth Russell, who got a written offer from Wichita State. We were going after "low hanging fruit" and if Russell wasn't an easy get I wasn't interested. She wasn't so great a player that I'd spend the kind of resources on her that I'd spend on Owens. Enjoy Wichita State.

(* * *)

On September 11th - a Tuesday - we headed back to Bloomington, Indiana for another go-round with Sofia Owens and her family of Indiana Hoosier roosters. By "we" I meant Caitlyn Williams and myself, for another tag team recruiting trip.

The conversation turned to politics. The previous Thursday, Barack Obama had been renominated for the presidency by the Democratic Party. He had run without any serious primary challenge, but archrivals were the least of his problems. The economy was in the toilet when he was elected, and after four years it was...still pretty much in the toilet. All of his stimuli had come to naught, with unemployment still threatening to go into double digits and no real movement in any economic sector.

Osama Bin Laden had been captured/killed under his watch, but America had moved on. The Iraq war technically ended at the end of 2011 but it didn't provide the decisive outcome that most had hoped for. Most of Obama's first term had yielded very little.

Caitlyn was of mixed feelings. Being black, she had a lot of sympathy and admiration for Obama, but she was also culturally conservative. "I'm not too enthusiastic about either side," she said.

I tried to blot out politics completely. Hard to do in South Dakota, a mostly red state where you couldn't drive five feet without being hit by a Romney/Sandoval sticker. The Republicans had their own troubles to deal with - much was made of the fact that the Republicans had a ticket with no Protestants on it. (Romney = Mormon, Sandoval = Catholic.) Furthermore, Sandoval had had a previous record of being pro-choice. He did the appropriate about face once he got the Vice-Presidential nominations, but that wasn't enough for the right wing of his party. My hope was that it was all be over soon.

(* * *)

On September 11th, we saw the Owenses for the second time. We didn't request them to make dinner for us - so they didn't - instead we went out to dinner. Mr. Owens must have been brilliant at managing cash, because he didn't ask to pick up the check as much as once. (We split the bill.) He still kept calling the Summit League the "Summer League" - I couldn't tell if his ignorance was deliberate or accidental.

"Sofia, what happened to Indiana and IUPUI?" I asked.

"They stopped calling me," she said. "They said that they were going to move on."

Yup. Even the best players had to deal with that. "You were polite about that, I hope."

"Yep. Except maybe for Indiana."

"No, Sofia," Mr. Owens said. "It was me that wasn't polite about that. I might still ask her to come on as a walk-on."

I hoped to God that he wasn't serious.

Sofia was still interested in computer science and asked a lot of questions about South Dakota's program. I was a bit shaky on that program, but Caitlyn described it in such glowing terms that I thought maybe I should have been a computer science major at James Madison. I could be going places with a South Dakota degree!

"Sofia, you know that more than anything we want you to come to South Dakota and put your name on the first page of a program that is going to rise to national prominence. We plan on building new facilities in a few years to showcase our program, but you're going to be a greater showcase. At Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky you'd be fighting for playing time, but at USD you can make an impact right away."

"Right coach," she said, "but I had coaches from Middle Tennessee and Western Kentucky here last week." (This was the first we heard of it.) "So it's a bit stressful."

"Well, don't stop having fun."

"No I'm not."

"They usually call every day." I made a note to do the same.

"I'll definitely tell you that it will be stressful," I said. "But clearly MTSU and Western Kentucky see that you're a valuable player - else they wouldn't be calling. So the question is, "at what school will I have the best chance to succeed?" And in this case, it's South Dakota. Ashley Brown will graduate at the end of the year, and that just leaves Merkle and Alexander ahead of you. You'd be the tallest player on this team and you'd bring real excitement to Vermillion."

Our total visit was two hours long. However, we did get Sofia Owens to agree to a visit to South Dakota. (I was glad that the visit wouldn't take place in bitter winter.) It would come at the end of the month.

"What do you think?" I asked Caitlyn after we left the restaurant.

"She's got a lot of her mind," Caitlyn said.

"I think she really wants to be wined and dined. She ordered the surf and turf. Most expensive thing on the menu. Talk about a lack of shyness - order the big stuff, Dad will pay. Something tells me that we're going to have to do a lot of hand-holding to get Owens on this team."

(* * *)

Everyone knows where they were on September 18, 2012. I was on campus dealing with Bella Grier, my sophomore shooting guard. It got back to me that Grier had lost one of her textbooks for the Fall Semester a few days after she purchased it - it might have been stolen, we'll never know.

This caused a sort of mini-crisis, because even though Grier's scholarship pays for books, it doesn't pay for replacements. After dressing down Grier for her carelessness, I told her that "either we'd be able to help you or we wouldn't." I'd either find a solution for this conundrum or she'd just have to pay for a $200 textbook out of her own pocket.

So I'm calling the bookstore and I can't get anyone to answer the phone. Finally, I get someone and they tell me that it's a little crazy right now due to what everyone's hearing over the radio. "Supposedly, there's a bunch of people that just died in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Everything has gone crazy over there, they say that a whole bunch of people are dead."

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/9945/073010ajcgasmainleak01t.jpg

Children are evacuated from an elementary school.

I go to the lounge, and there are already maybe a dozen people from the athletic department looking on in horror. Activity at the DakotaDome came to a halt. KELO - and every other major network - was now in full-time around-the-clock reporting mode. Most of the feeds were coming from Detroit television.

Calls were being reported about people dying at fast food restaurants - they were just falling over dead. People were dropping dead in the streets, in houses, in office buildings, on their lawns. In grade schools. Anyone who wasn't dying was starting to get sick and a mass panic was starting to break out, which the network coverage only amplified.

More news came out. The police, the National Guard, and then the Army were cordoning off the city.

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The elderly are evacuated from Ypsilanti.

That the mayor of Ypsilanti was dead and that Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan was calling for a state of emergency. That phone lines to and from Ypsilanti were jammed. That Eastern Michigan University had been closed by the state government.

I got a call from Willie Burbank. "If you have any practices today, cancel them. This isn't the time and the place for that." By now, the photographs of the dead were being shown on the internet and television. The University of South Dakota was going to have a candlelight vigil that night.

(* * *)

Obama was in Hollywood at a private fund-raiser when he was first informed. Therefore, he was spared the "My Pet Goat" moment that dogged George W. Bush throughout his term as there were no cameras at the fund-raiser. Joe Biden was giving a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina when he was cued by his aides to cut it short - by that time he was almost finished speaking. He simply skipped to the final paragraph, thanked the audience (who were unaware of what was going on) and disappeared.

Romney was in Miami for a speech that he'd never give. Sandoval was at a Sante Fe, New Mexico hospital to give his stump speech on Obamacare, he got to the hospital, told the staff that he'd not be giving a speech, and turned right around.

By evening, the word was coming out from Ypsilanti of "terrorist attack" and "poisoning". Obama gave his address to the nation that night at 8 pm EST.

"My fellow Americans. It is my sad duty to inform you that a terrorist attack on Ypsilanti, Michigan has caused a major loss of life. The United States Army and the Center for Disease Control have established a perimeter around the city. All of those that we believed have survived the attack are being evacuated from the city.

"I am asking the people of America to remain calm. The goal of the United States is that terrorism shall not gain any foothold on the way of life that we value so highly. The governments of Michigan, the United States government, the Department of Homeland Security and our national intelligences services are doing all that they can to prevent any further attacks and to help those who have been affected.

....

"...we will not succumb to a mentality that sacrifices our open values and liberties to our opponents. Our vision exceeds that of our short-sighted opponents from around the world. We will prevail. The keys to the gates of America will not be handed to those whose vision is that of misery and death. Not by me, not by my successor, and not by any American president."

(* * *)

We learned more in the days that followed. It had been an attack on Ypsilanti's water supply. Basically, Ypsilanti's water had been poisoned by a neurotoxin. This caused a huge run on bottled water across the country; you couldn't get the stuff anywhere. People began to stockpile it in the panic that ensued.

Normally, such an attack on a water supply was considered both implausible and unrealistic by experts. But, well, those theories failed the acid test.

The presidential campaigns grounded to a halt. There was talk of postponing the presidential elections. The White House decided not to do it - "we don't let terrorists interfere with elections". (The State of Georgia threatened to use the laws under its state constitution to postpone its Election Day; public opinion soon made that a non-starter.)

The election's focus on the economy and Obamacare was immediately derailed in favor of that of national security - economic issues were almost forgotten at the end of the 2012 campaign.

There were a few assaults on Muslim-Americans in a state - Michigan - with a highest Muslim percentage of population. Most of these attackers were just as unhinged as any al-Qaeda terrorist could be, they not only couldn't make a distinction between an Arab Muslim and an Indian Muslim - or Indian Hindu, or Sikh for that matter - but generally didn't care.

What was most terrifying of all was the fact that whoever had done this was not known. There had been no manifesto, and the Department of Homeland Security had no answers. In the meantime, support for President Obama was beginning to rise, he had closed the gap with Romney at the end of the month and his favorable rating was moving up. The country was "rallying around the flag" and America looked a lot like it did after 9/11 - a lot of American flags, everywhere.

(* * *)

By the time we got to the end of September and Sofia Owens's visit, the backdrop for the most part was doom and gloom. The country was in a depressed mood if one could imagine such a thing. We were still being bombarded by images of the dead in the streets on television and Ypsilanti was still closed down. (This tangentially affected women's basketball, as there was talk of Eastern Michigan closing its season. One life had been lost on the team - that of Ella Gillette, a senior walk-on who barely got to play for the Eagles.

I needed to put Owens with someone, and I decided to go with Catalina Stewart, who would be her host. There was a risk that Owens might overwhelm Stewart but it was a risk I decided to take. With the Ypsilante Memorial events constantly in the background, we decided that the best defense against terror was a good offense - we were going to have fun and we were going to enjoy ourselves.

Owens's campus visit got high marks from everyone - Stewart liked her, and the rest of the team liked her. "It looks like the conclusion is obvious," I said. "You know that everyone here likes you and wants you to be a part of this team. You can definitely play. So when are you going to sign your letter of intent?"

"I'd love to play here," she said. "But my Mom has a lot of reservations. She really wants me in Indiana."

"Right, but you said that there isn't any interest from Indiana."

"I know, Coach Hawkins," Owens said. "But she's hoping that someone from Indiana will call. I really want to play ball for South Dakota, but I can't sign that letter of intent."

So that was it. Owens's mother had been very quiet and supportive. This is the first time that I had heard that there was any kind of conflict about where Sofia Owens played. But the game wasn't over yet. I could still keep visiting the Owens household and attempt to win her mother over. Most people would think that I would be angry about what Owens told me. On the contrary - I now knew where to focus the recruiting.

(* * *)

At the end of the month, on a short wave radio station which served as an impromptu radio network for those who were active believers in that twig on the branch of Protestant Christianity that could loosely be referred to as "Dominion theology" - the believe that American society should be reconstructed on Old Testament Law and that a Christian theocracy should actively take power - a telephone caller contacted the short-wave broadcasters and told them that God had poured out his "Third Bowl Judgment" on America.

Normally, this information wouldn't have been interesting to anyone but the few hundred listeners and followers of this brand of hard-core triumphalists and the FBI men assigned to keep tabs on them. The caller did not give him name. However, this 10 minute rant would turn out to be the key to determining what happened in Ypsilanti....

(* * *)

In other overshadowed news around the world, the London Array wind farm went online.

http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/4195/londonarray129886b.jpg

It was the largest offshore wind farm in the world, consisting of 341 turbines. When the London Array was hooked up, the electricity generated by wind could power a quarter of all of the homes in London and 750,000 homes overall.

Clearly, the British had decided to get into wind power in a big way. The Brits saw it as a win-win proposition all the way around. Wind energy decreased any dependence on foreign energy. Carbon emissions were greatly reduced, and the development of this technology cleared the way for what the UK hoped would be expertise in "green jobs" and for a boost in the UK's employment rate both at home and overseas.

WRITER'S NOTES

First, if there's a sense that this is turning more into political fiction than basketball story, my deepest apologies. The issue is that I want to flesh out this future universe as much as I possibly can. That means reporting on political and social events. The universe should be calming down in a little while, waiting it out. For those political partisans out there, hopefully by 2016 the universe will be so different followers of whatever political party won't feel like they're getting picked on.

For those lovers of basketball, it should be two more game months before South Dakota's season opens. And then basketball - naturally - will take the forefront.

Petrel · December 16, 2011

October 2012

There was a lot going on in October 2012, both inside and outside of the program.

One issue - the final roster spot on the women's basketball team. Technically, we had one non-scholarship spot open and I intended to fill it. When the semester started, I had a student from the Athletic Department put up fliers so that new students could try out for the South Dakota Coyotes women's team.

I only had seven takers. I wondered if USD students were even aware of the program. That Saturday, I worked all seven girls, and in about a hour and a half I sent five of them home. That left two that we would work with on Sunday. We'd be giving them both strength and fitness workouts and we'd pick the best candidate.

Our walk-on candidate was a 6-0 freshman, "swift forward" Maliah Lewellen out of Ferndale, California. She had played a bench role on her local team at Ferndale High School. She was actually a decent post-defender and she was quick. I asked her why she didn't try for a scholarship or D-II role somewhere. "I thought basketball wasn't that fun and I figured I'd just play pickup from now on," Maliah said, "but this summer I thought I had made a mistake."

I told her that there would be no off-the-books agreement where she might get a scholarship if she lasted a year. "You might not get any assistance all four years," I said. "And I can cut you at any time."

"I don't need the scholarship," she said. "I can pay my way." (We would call such players "preferred walk-ons" but she certainly wouldn't have been recruited.)

"Then Number 53 is open, so take that one."

http://img861.imageshack.us/img861/6858/2012Maliahlewellen.jpg

#53 Maliah Lewellen - SF (6-0) - Ferndale, CA

Strengths: none

Weaknesses: inside shooting, free throw shooting, defensive rebounding, blocking

Interests: Swimming, snorkeling

Major: Undeclared

(* * *)

We continued to talk to Sofia Owens day by day. We planned yet another visit to Bloomington, Indiana, hoping that no other team would add itself to Sofia's list. And finally, that first week, Sofia told us some great news.

Western Kentucky had pulled out of the chase! The message from Western Kentucky was that they were moving forward, being so close to the November signing deadline. This left only Middle Tennessee State - and us - on Sofia Owens's ESPN Rise page as one of her "top schools".

I suspect that other top prospects were starting to take notice of our pursuit of Sofia Owens. Generally, only the most blue-chip of blue-chippers e-mailed each other or called each other on the phone - they shared information about where they were going and tried to convince each other to come to one school or another (although women's basketball hadn't yet seen anything like LeBron and the Miami Heat - there had never been a situation where all of the uppermost recruits committed to the same school). Owens was a three-stars-out-of-five player. This stuff didn't happen at her level.

But even so, the water level was rising and lifting the South Dakota boat. Cherish Rampage and Nadia Mansfield - two elite level players that had grown cold on us - were now suddenly listing South Dakota among their favorite schools despite the fact that a) we hadn't offered a scholarship and b) other much bigger schools had made either verbal or written offers. Of our "Dream Ten", the number of players listing South Dakota as a favorite school blew up from one player - Owens - to six players, including Breanna Vanscoy, a player I felt was even better than Owens.

We were still committed to Owens. We planned another home visit on Thursday, October 18th. It would be another tag team effort of both myself and Caitlyn Williams. Our dream - our pipe dream - was to get her committed before the beginning of the early signing period.

The problem was with our group of ten "Easy Gets". Our easy gets were on the verge of being gotten. Five different players - including Elizabeth Russell (Wichita State), Breanna Sadler (North Dakota State), Alyssa Shaw (Colorado) - all had scholarship offers from higher level schools.

So what did we do? Did we scramble to offer that last scholarship? I didn't want to be distracted from the propect of getting Owens. And besides, these were supposed to be easy gets. All of these students had South Dakota on their list of favorites (although in the majority of cases we were both the only favorite and the only Division I school listed).

We adjusted the Easy Gets list. Those players getting good offers were dropped from the list. We would have to start again. I decided I wouldn't be offering the second scholarship of my two scholarships until after the first week of November. The girls above fell off the list, and it was time to start looking at the next batch.

(* * *)

On October 12th, Midnight Madness was taking place all across America - inexplicably enough, it wasn't taking place at South Dakota. To me, this was rather inexplicable. It's not as if Vermillion offered a wealth of activities outside campus? Why not hold a Midnight Madness here? The Yankton Press and Dakotan was all for it!

"We need to save money," Willie Burbank told both me and Gerald Acevedo, the men's basketball coach. "Having a special function for the DakotaDome would cost a lot of money." My bet was that if South Dakota football held a Midnight Madness he'd fall all over himself. But there was some truth to it - basketball didn't have the campus pull to make a Midnight Madness event worth all that much.

Therefore, our first practice was held at the earliest the NCAA allowed - which was not midnight, but at 5:30 pm. (Most schools waited until midnight if they had Midnight Madness.)

I decided that I was going to focus on a few basic plays in order for us to get things right. "You weren't able to play the offenses I taught you last year, anyway - so we're going back to basics!" That means that most of the emphasis in the month before our first game was going to be on fundamentals - dribbling, passing, boxing out, and of course - man to man defense.

I changed a few things. I made the game much more structured. There would be three or four basic plays and we would use those plays exclusively. I didn't feel we had much shot creation, and therefore every shot would have to be created out of a set - no improvising. We would, however, shoot the 3-pointer just a little bit more.

Last year, we tried doubling up on offensive players, but our defense has so many holes in it in that I couldn't afford that anymore. From now on, the defense was going to be man-to-man, not two-man-to-man. Except when the enemy got caught in corners or on the sidelines, no one was going to help the defender out.

Abigail Merkle and Catalina Stewart were picking up on things pretty quickly, and they would be the go-to players in tough situations.

You never know whether or not this will work until you try it. But with the Yotes only winning eight games last year, I was willing to try anything.

(* * *)

In the meantime, life moved on. At the beginning of the month, residents were allowed to return to Ypsilanti, Michigan to bury their dead and begin the process of mourning after the most deadly terrorist attack in American history.

Eastern Michigan University would be closed for the Fall Semester. But the women's team would still play. Michigan had agreed to serve as home team during the early part of the year until Spring Semester started. With two players poisoned to death in the attack, it would be a very sad year for the Eastern Michigan program.

Even so, the attack would continue to claim lives in the coming years. There were thousands of people whose health was permanently damaged; it would be hard to count those hidden deaths. Residents were warned not to let standing water accumulate and to run their faucets for several days before using city water - but there was the chance that standing water in some hose or pipe would be ready to strike. A handful of people weren't careful enough, and paid the price for it.

At the FBI in Washington, DC, a name was deciphered from the phone call made to that wackjob Dominionist radio station. In the background, while the speaker was ranting, someone said, "Has Elijah heard from anybody yet?" It was very weak and required a lot of audio magic to clarify - and even then, there was a problem.

Dominionists tended to speak in an apocalyptic code. The "Third Bowl Judgment" referred to a passage in Revelation 16:4....

And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy. And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous [are] thy judgments[./b]

This "third bowl judgment" was known to Dominionist speakers and needed no translation. Maybe Elijah was also some sort of code. Assuming that it wasn't code - that "Elijah" represented a living person.

That October 17, the mystery speaker spoke again, calling the same small radio station.

HOST: So what are you saying about punishment, caller?

CALLER: If God could turn water into wine, he could turn blood into wine or wine into blood. You see, the meaning doesn't have to be literal, for it indicates the outpouring of God's wrath. This is what it means about water becoming blood -

HOST: I don't think so. The Bible means what it means.

CALLER: Well, what do you think happened in Michigan? That was God's wrath with America turning its back on God and the other judgments are coming soon. God doesn't need actual blood for a third bowl judgment, poison will do. And I'm proud to say that I was the instrument of God's hand.

HOST: So...you're saying that you poisoned the people in Michigan?

CALLER: God's wrath is always just.

The host thanked the caller quickly and hung up. That same host, a man named Allen White, would go to trial one year later in a long trial - did he know enough about what was going on to be charged with not coming forward with what he might have suspected?

(* * *)

Of course, we were all unaware of that. We left Katie Ulmer and Raelynn Reavis to keep the team on track while we made yet another visit to Sofia Owens

By now, I thought I knew enough about Sofia Owens to sign her name to a piece of paper. The purpose of this visit would be to show her how she was going to fit into the game system. We put together a set of film from both her high school games and games played by the Coyotes the previous year to show how her role in high school would differ from her role at USD and what we would expect this year.

"Sofia, I think you're a perfect fit. We're keeping this system with a few basic sets, and I know that you're smart enough to jump right in. This offense isn't going to be much different from the one you're playing now; in fact it might be simpler."

The speech wasn't so much for me as it was for Mrs. Owens, who I perceived as being the major obstacle with Sofia coming to South Dakota. I told Caitlyn that there would be no letting down our hair. "As far as I'm concerned, we're dressing like this is a business meeting."

Finally, Mrs. Owens spoke. "How much class do you see Sofia missing? The trips in the Summit League have to be very long."

"Mrs. Owens," I said. "We play our league games on Thursday and Saturday. We can't play back to back on the weekend. But we do our best to schedule on the weekends to minimize missed class time. There's a proposal in the Summit League to go to Friday/Sunday which would minimize lost class time even further. In the meantime, the Summit League monitors missed class time very carefully. Our APR - our academic progress rate - and our GSR - our graduation success rate - exceeds the average for athletes in all sports across NCAA Division I."

"Anyway," I said, "I'm hoping that Sofia can make a decision soon."

Sofia and Mrs. Owens exchanged a split-second glance. "I think I'm going to let Sofia make that decision when she's ready for it."

Our visit took two hours - it was our longest visit yet to the Owens's. "Note what Mrs. Owens said," Caitlyn said.

"What? Did I miss something?"

"She said she was going to let Sofia make the decision. When she's ready for it."

"You're saying that mama is still going to decide?"

"Mama," Caitlyn said, "is going to have a big hand in that."

"Do you think we made a dent?"

"I don't know," Caitlyn said. "Mama is playing her cards very close to her chest."

(* * *)

While we waited for word from Sofia Owens at the end of October, we continued to practice and life went on around us.

By now, the United States election was going into the homestretch, and the issue - the only issue really - was terrorism. Romney - running hard to the center - was at war with his own party regarding what should be done about Obama's sudden surge in the polls.

It turns out that after a terrorist attack, people tend to rally around the flag. Obama was now ahead by six points in the polls and picking up speed. The hard right wanted to lay the responsibility for the attack on Obama, calling Ypsilanti a "massive national security failure". This line of attack was proving to be very hard to sell because people were generally resistant to hearing it. People were resistant to the line of thinking 11 years earlier that 9/11 was George W. Bush napping on the job; people were similarly disposed to be hostile to any attempt to dump 9/18 into Barack Obama's lap.

(What about the hard left? They were generally being ignored by the media with the Ypsilanti attack crowding their economic concerns right off the map. Coverage of the Occupy Movement fell to rock bottom and the Occupiers were thinking of increasing their list of demands from zero to one - that of "acknowledgment".)

Meanwhile, the national security apparatus dragged its wish list into Congress again. There were many items on the wish list - loosely called "Patriot Act II" - which called for (among other things) the creation of DNA bases of suspected terrorists, an expansion of the federal death penalty and the denial of bail for terrorism related crimes. The most chilling was the prohibition of disclosure of the names of any alleged terrorist being investigated by the federal government.

By now, the public was willing to have Congress do something - anything really - and they would even stomach Patriot II. But - and this was the inexplicable part - Congress refused to act.

Congress - and the Republicans - were caught between a rock and a hard place. The entire four years of the Obama Administration had been dedicated to the Republican strategy that Obama was a poor leader, and the Republican goal was always to deny him any kind of legislative triumph. (The left's name for this was "obstructionism".) Republican congressional leaders felt that the key to beating Obama in November would be to make it impossible for Obama to compromise with their party and to see that Patriot Act II failed.

Romney thought this was a bad plan. Romney's camp wanted Patriot Act II out of the way as fast as possible - "give him what he wants and let's return to the campaign." Romney had campaigned hard on the economy and Obamacare and did not want to return to foreign policy. (It was still believed that al-Qaeda or Iran or the Boogeyman of the Month was behind the Ypsilanti poisoning.) The Republican candidate believed that the more Obama talked about the "Patriot Act II" legislation (the legislation was never given that name), the more it played to Obama's strengths. (Romney had debated Obama three times in October, with Obama winning the first two and Romney winning the third - undercutting his own argument with his party by attacking the president's actions regarding Ypsilanti.)

The problem for Romney was that he didn't have many friends in the Republican party - he had always been their second choice, in by default because the party couldn't coalesce about an anti-Romney. Support had only been skin deep, and the shallowness of Romney's support was starting to show. The core had its own ideas, and they were not necessarily Romney's.

On October 29th, the Republicans caved and passed Patriot Act II - by voice vote, and then cleared the legislative table until the election. Romney would return head-on to hitting Obama about the economy. But would it work?

(* * *)

At the end of the year, South Dakota played its first basketball game of the season.

This requires some explanation. The NCAA allows every basketball team two exhibition games. A team gets to choose whether or not these games are "open exhibitions" or "closed exhibitions".

An open exhibition is just that - open to the public. However, the NCAA states that these games can only be against Division II teams or lower. Last year, Willie Burbank didn't want to have an open exhibition and I didn't want one, either. Oh, there are lots of schools we could play - Black Hills State, South Dakota Mines - but I don't think those schools do much to prepare you for Division I play.

The other game is the closed exhibition. It's a game against an actual Division I squad. I'd rather see where we are against that level of competition. Unfortunately, Willie Burbank would only let us play one closed exhibition game, on the road "where they can pay for it". This left us with just one closed-doors game, this time against the North Dakota Suhaki of the Big Sky Conference:

South Dakota 54, North Dakota 52

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    18   2-3   1-2   1   6   0  5   5
Bella Grier       PF   34   4-6   0-1   1   5   1  3   9
Catalina Stewart  SF   27   4-7   3-4   1   3   1  4  11
C. Harrington     SG   28   3-7   3-7   2   7   2  0  10
Abagail Merkle    PG   29  4-11   0-0   0   1   3  0   8
Allison Riggle    PG   18   1-2   0-0   0   2   1  2   3
Maliah Lewellen   C    18   2-3   0-0   1   3   2  1   4
Jessica Bing      SF    7   0-0   2-4   0   0   1  1   2
Ashley Brown      C    15   0-2   1-2   2   3   2  1   1
Anzhelika Bure    SG    3   0-0   1-2   0   0   0  0   1

Turnovers: 16 (A.Choe 1, B.Grier 1, C.Stewart 6, 
C.Harrington 1, A.Merkle 3, A.Riggle 1, M.Lewellen 3)
Blocked Shots: 1 (B.Grier 1)
Steals: 4 (A.Choe 2, C.Stewart 1, A.Merkle 1)
3P FGs: 3-8 (B.Grier 1-1, C.Stewart 0-1, C.Harrington 
1-2, A.Merkle 0-1, A.Riggle 1-2, M.Lewellen 0-1)

North DakotaStats :
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Lillian Neary     C    29   2-2   2-2   0   6   0  2   6
Haley Muniz       PF   27   2-5   0-2   2   9   3  3   4
Emilie Gonzalez   SF   23  8-11   0-0   1   5   1  5  16
Cassandra Bremer  SG   26   2-5   0-0   1   3   1  3   5
Ava Elizondo      PG   27   1-6   0-0   0   0   2  1   3
Addison Ruffner   PG   18   1-7   0-1   0   0   1  2   3
Jaycee Wren       SG   10   1-2   0-0   1   1   0  0   2
Avery Fraley      C    10   0-2   0-0   0   1   0  1   0
Arely Hoskins     PF   11   1-1   2-4   0   0   0  1   4
Camilla Fernando  SF   10   3-4   1-1   2   2   0  1   7
Cali Hovis        PF    2   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  0   0
Kayla Larson      PG    6   0-1   2-2   0   0   2  0   2

Turnovers: 14 (L.Neary 2, E.Gonzalez 4, C.Bremer 1, 
A.Elizondo 2, A.Ruffner 1, J.Wren 1, C.Fernando 2, 
C.Hovis 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 6 (E.Gonzalez 1, A.Ruffner 1, J.Wren 2, 
C.Fernando 1, K.Larson 1)
3P FGs: 3-16 (H.Muniz 0-1, E.Gonzalez 0-1, C.Bremer 
1-4, A.Elizondo 1-6, A.Ruffner 1-4)

Player of Game: C Caroline Harrington (SD)

For a team that barely won any games at all last year, North Dakota put up a fight. We were down 29-24 at halftime and it was gut-check time. We had three starters that had never started before, inlcuding Catalina Stewart at small forward. Talk about shaking off the rust.

The Suhaki switched off between a man defense and a 2-3 zone - we stuck with the man all the way through. In the second half, North Dakota led 31-24 at one time but we refused to let them widen it out and clawed our way back into contention.

Then we took the lead, and then we lost it, and then it went back and forth. It was 50-50 with 59 seconds left. We ran down the clock all the way to the bottom with Jessica Bing making the shot just before time expired but getting fouled by Emilie Gonzalez of the Suhaki, who fouled out. Bing went to the free throw line, hit the first, missed the second....

...but Maliah Lewellen, the walk-on, tips in the missed free throw! North Dakota didn't even see it coming! It's good! We're up 53-50! The Suhaki would try for a 3-pointer but they'd miss it, and we'd get the rebound. They'd be forced to foul and Caroline Herrington would hit one of two with eight seconds left to keep it out of reach. They couldn't get off another attempt from three and had to settle for two - but it was all over.

Catalina Stewart had 11 points - but she had four fouls and six turnovers. We gotta work on that. I was glad that we won. The problem was that last year, North Dakota finished the season at 4-25. If we can only beat a team that bad by two points, what does it say about us?

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

Here is the Game Plan screen for the Coyotes:

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/8428/201213gameplan.jpg

Here is the Depth Chart screen for the Coyotes:

http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/8428/201213gameplan.jpg

Using these screens is a bit of a struggle - so many options. In almost every case, I went with the game recommendation. In the game above, I had the "Motion" option set on 10 - my understanding is that setting it to zero is the go-head for anyone to shoot if they have an opening, and 10 means "only shoot from sets".

I reset the recommended defense from 2-3 to man-to-man. I recommended the offense go through Merkle and Stewart; the computer added Harrington.

There's one aspect I might change and that's focus. The computer wants the focus outside. I had it set to "balanced"; I might reset it to balanced.

With regard to the exhibition game above - these are indeed the present NCAA rules for exhibition games. Since this game doesn't have any D-II teams enabled; I decided to have one lone closed exhibition game, with injuries turned off.

Falcon21 · December 25, 2011

Read this whole thing through, really a great story with really excellent writing.

Setting it in the women's game makes it interesting because I don't really know much about that world so reading about it makes it different from the standard build up a horrible school story.

Keep up the good work, and I have this bookmarked for future reading!

Petrel · December 28, 2011

Read this whole thing through, really a great story with really excellent writing.

Setting it in the women's game makes it interesting because I don't really know much about that world so reading about it makes it different from the standard build up a horrible school story.

Keep up the good work, and I have this bookmarked for future reading!

Thanks! Right now, I'm dealing with a hard drive crash that unfortunately struck the hard drive where my FBCB stuff rested. There is still hope for rescue - a Universal Drive Adapter should arrive soon in the mail and I'm hoping I can rescue this game.

I'll keep you posted. Once again, thanks for the comment!

Petrel · January 3, 2012

A quick reply: I am now able to recover the hard drive data and am asking for technical assistance on the board. I hope to have this dynasty up and running soon.

masterofnone · January 9, 2012

This is a very interesting read. Looking forward to see it continue, and for you to get on into the 2012-13 season.

Petrel · January 9, 2012

Masterofnone, thanks for reading! The reinstall worked and I hope to be writing soon.

Petrel · January 12, 2012

November 2012

The 2012 election finally ended. I didn't miss the damned commercials, not one bit.

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/7931/2012presidentialelectio.jpg

It looked like America was going to give Barack Obama one more round, as the Obama/Biden ticket beat Romney/Sandoval by a factor of 49.2 percent to 48.2 percent. The Electoral College win was a bit more decisive, 286 electoral votes to 252, with Obama winning Colorado and winning Virginia for a second time. It seemed like the Democrats were gaining a foothold in the Old Dominion. The Republicans hoped they could take Michigan by riding a wave of "it happened on Obama's watch" and Romney's in-state connections (his father was governor of Michigan) but it was not to be.

Romney was simply never able to regain the podium after Ypsilanti. He had been running on the economy the entire time. Perhaps that was what stopped him. The Republican believed that the election would be a referendum on the economy; when it became about something else - when it played to their traditional strength - they were bizarrely unprepared. Obama jumped into the gap, proving he could run on security just as well as the economy.

The Republicans would have to deal with Obama until 2016. They still held the House, and as expected, they took control of the Senate. This guaranteed four years of gridlock, and depending on your party it was something to be cherished or despised.

(* * *)

When signing day happened, we lost a lot of the players on our elite list.

Cherish Rampage decided she couldn't wait any longer. She signed with the Michigan Wolverines. Robert Holloway stayed close to home and signed with Stephen F. Austin in Texas. Two other players fell off the list, to Valparaiso and Marquette, respectively.

But we didn't do too bad, otherwise. We still have five players on the elite list, including Sophia Owens. We didn't lose a single player on our non-elite list, and we had some prospects that I'd be forced to take a strong look at.

One was Sarah Alex, one of the monster players that women's basketball was starting to produce. She was 6-7 and scored 14.5 points per game and 7.9 rebounds per game. The problem was that she was a turnover machine, coughing up the ball 3.2 times per game. She had no handles, and I mean, none, handing the ball like a man (or woman) carrying a cinder block across a court. She had no tactile sense for the game, but perhaps - maybe - could improve, but I doubted it.

Another was Isabella Crumley. Crumley was another Amazon at 6-7. 13.5 ppg and 10.2 rpg. Couldn't hit a jump shot to save her life, all of her shots were bunnies where she used her size and length to shoot point-blank. A good free throw shooter (71.8 percent) and she lived in Michigan, which given our attempt to establish a nationwide profile was practically next door.

The third was Ashlyn Dickson. Dickson was 6-9 (I never thought I'd see the day where height was that common in women's basketball players). She scored 16.7 points per game and showed flashed of real talent. The problem was that there were over 300 Division I schools, and most coaches could see that talent, too. Memphis was interested in Dickson, and Dickson was from Mississippi - Memphis was right off the Mississippi boarder. With Ole Miss showing no interest in their homegrown prospect (she attended Oxford High School), Dickson might be tempted to stay as close to in-state as she could get.

I convened our coaching college once again. We were about two weeks away from our opening game at the time.

My three assistants were split equally: Caitlyn Williams said that we should get the best player that we could get - and that was Dickson. "If we could move her just a little bit," Williams said, "we have a shot at getting her."

Raelynn Reavis wanted Sarah Alex. "She's got so much potential."

As for Katie Ulmer, she wanted Crumley. "I see Crumley as an easy pick. She's right next door. If her parents want to see her play, they can go to Oakland. We play them twice a year."

I thought Williams was deluded, thinking far too much of her persuasive abilities. Reavis was just projecting onto a blank slate. Ulmer was going for convenience.

"Who wants it the most?" I asked.

Everyone looked at Caitlyn. "That's hard to say."

"What does Kong say?" I asked, referring to our computerized recruiting system. During calls, there was a series of check marks that you were supposed to fill out during a call, with positive vs. negative hints and responses.

"You can't really go by Kong," Caitlyn said. She had never warmed up to the computer.

I grabbed a laptop and pulled up our recruiting list. Crumley was the only one of the three who ranked "Very High" in interest. She knew the most about South Dakota, she hadn't been jerking us around on our calls, she had no negatives for the school, she knew the majors. Kong took all of these subjective factors and assigned each one of them a mathematical value.

"I think it's time to strike," I said. It's Crumley. Isabelle Crumley is going to be a power forward for us. Sofia Owens and Isabella Crumley are our targets. I'm going to be the next person to call Crumley and I'm going to extend an offer. When's the next best time we can see Crumley?"

"Well...that's this weekend," Caitlyn said. "But that's the weekend before our opener."

"Better then than never. Gonna be busy during the year. You and me, Caitlyn. We're heading to...where is she from?"

"Detroit."

Whoa. "Detroit it is. And set up another meeting with Sofia Owens. Damn, we have done everything but sit in her lap and feed her grapes. Middle Tennessee is still in there. We gotta get Middle Tennessee's fangs out of our player. If she isn't signed by the end of the month I don't know what I'm going to do."

(* * *)

It wasn't like Crawley lived out on 8 Mile. She lived in southwest Detroit, in an area that was pretty diverse for Detroit - black, Hispanic and white. They called the area "Mexicantown" and it was one of the few areas of Detroit that seemed to be getting better.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/9903/6432599363d4d7455c8ao.jpg

Crawley was black. She was presently the only child in the family. Her father was a lawyer, but he must not have been a very good one. Her mother worked in some kind of computer support role for a paint company. She had a younger brother who died at the age of five; his picture was displayed prominently in almost every room. It must have felt like living in a funeral home.

It was one of those horrible visits, but not for the reason you think. The Crawleys, apparently, just weren't talkers. Everything the father said had this slow, measured cadence that made you feel like each word he said cost money; I later learned that he did not practice before a judge. (Thank God.) Mrs. Crawley said virtually nothing.

As for Isabella Crawley, she had that deer in headlights look - as if one wrong word out of her mouth meant that me and Caitlyn were going to sprint right out the door and take her scholarship with her. "Trust me, Isabella," I said. "We want to sign you. We want to offer you a scholarship for four years at South Dakota."

She looked at her dad. "This is something...we need to think about...it's a legal document...binding...."

Technically, it wasn't. A NLI was a binding agreement between schools, not between players. Having the Letter of Intent signed bound every school that used NLIs to stop recruiting someone else's players. It could be broken by either side, but it was bad form to do so. The problem was, I didn't want to explain that to him and give the Crawleys the impression that if they signed an NLI they could just walk out of it.

Other than that, the questions went like this.

"So, Isabella, have you decided on a major?" ("Uhh...no. I mean...I know I want to go to school somewhere good....")

"What are you looking for in a school?" ("Well...it would have to be a good school.")

"Are you involved in any clubs at school?" ("Uhh...I play basketball.")

On it went, like a root canal that went on for two hours. Caitlyn and I were the ones to finally get up and go. We still wanted Isabella - at least, we thought we did - but I didn't know how we were going to deal with that 6-7 inarticulate lump when - or if - we got her to South Dakota. If she played as well as she held a conversation she wouldn't make it on an NAIA squad.

We got out the door and walked to the car. I waited until we were in, the doors were locked, and we were on our way rolling.

"What the hell was that?" I said.

"Man, I...." Caitlyn sighed. "I swear to God she was a lot different on the phone."

"Yeah, she seemed very happy when I offered her a scholarship. That was just weird."

"I told you," Caitlyn said, "you can't trust a computer."

(* * *)

As for our recruiting list, we got lucky. Somehow, Denver and BYU had fallen through. I didn't know what had happened but those names had fallen off her list and at ESPN Rise Gray's status was listed as "unsigned". We followed up with the Grays and they were very glad to hear from us. Aaliyah Gray had been rescue from the dust heap.

We begin to look at players overseas. We'd have to spend a lot of money on film and contact scouts. There was a French player named Juliette Delrue who scored 20.3 points per game and hadn't turned pro yet. She had filled out a questionnaire from USD, but that was from a year earlier. We didn't know if she had the same interest but it looked like she'd be willing to take our calls. All sorts of big name schools - Duke, among them - were trying to convince her to come to the United States but none of them had made an offer.

(* * *)

We were heading into the final week of preparation before our opening game at home against Eastern Kentucky. Near the end of the year, I gave a little talk about our goals for the upcoming season.

"Let's not think about our record last year," I said, "because we are a great basketball team. We proved it in conference play. You can look at an 8-22 season, but we were 7-11 in conference. We surprised a lot of people. And you're willing to put in the work - you've shown it all year. No one believes it is. But it doesn't matter what anyone else believes. The only thing that matters is what we believe. Connecticut puts the same shorts on that we do. UCLA likes the same kinds of boys that you do.

"we will go out on the court with the attitude of a winner. We will lay it on the line for every loose ball. Whatever's on the scoreboard, that's what it is. If we're down by 40 points, we are going to play South Dakota basketball in the 2012-13 season. We are ready. We have the attitude. We move the ball. Every shot is the right shot to take!"

"Any attitude?" I asked.

"All attitude!" they said.

"We ready?" I asked.

"One hundred percent ready!" they shouted.

"What's that I hear?"

"I hear barking!"

"Who's barking?"

"Yotes barking!"

"Who gonna bite?"

"Yotes bite!"

"What's it sound like?"

And the seniors led the BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK-BARK!!

"On three...one two three...."

"SOUTH DAKOTA!"

(* * *)

While we were getting psyched up for the 2012-13 season, the world moved on.

On November 13, 2012 the FBI stormed into the house of Mark Richard Capel, a member of the Ypsilanti, Michigan police force. They didn't exactly give him time to answer the door before they smashed through his door, taking him before he had time to get to his gun. The Federal Government had been keeping their eye on Capel, and he had made a phone call to a Canadian phone number on a cell phone that he thought was secure. Rather than wait for him to show up to work or to attempt to cross the Canadian-US border they decided to grab him. Capel was living in Romulus, Michigan at the time.

Capel was considered the outer link in a net of right wing Christian militias. A separate investigation brought Capel's name up in a database, and an investigation led to the connection between a splinter group of the Michigan Militia that he was believed to belong to and a Dominionist cult named the Bosom of Abraham which had as its leader Dr. Edward Thomas Haight. Haight's Ph. D. was in chemistry and his college minor was biology. After Haight found Jesus, he began to become more and more deeply involved in Dominion theology and changed his name to Elijah Abraham, devoting hours and hours of study into the Book of Revelations and becoming more and more reclusive. He resigned his position as a chemical researcher and he and his group of ten followers began to devote themselves full-time to the upcoming apocalypse.

Abraham concocted a witch's brew of theology, believing that there would be certain "catalysts" to events foretold in Revelations 16. He believed that the first bowl judgment - that of the painful sores that would appear on the skins of those rebelling against God - came true in the form of AIDS in the 1970s-90s. The next bowl judgments would be those of the "rivers of blood" and "seas of blood".

When Mitt Romney nominated Brian Sandoval, this was Abraham's sign that the United States had turned its back on God by nominating "A Muslim, a Mormon and two Catholics" as Abraham said during a short-wave radio show. (Obama was not Muslim, but Abraham had clearly made up his mind otherwise.) Therefore, the United States was deserving of the bowl judgments and God's wrath. Abraham would be instrument of that wrath.

And Elijah Abraham could bring them about! He had the knowledge in chemistry, and the samples from his chemical research. (The general theory would be that it would be impossible to poison a water purification system; Abraham's studies took him to the opposite conclusion but his theory had not been tested large scale.) All he needed was a target.

Since he traveled with his Bosom of Abraham cult through Minnesota-Wisconsin-Michigan, he planned on poisoning the Notre Dame/Michigan football game shortly after he learned of Sandoval's nomination. Romney's father had been governor of Michigan, Sandoval was Catholic - it worked perfectly! But the geniuses of the Bosom of Abraham misread the Michigan football schedule, proving they were no Wolverine fans - Abraham thought it was a Michigan home game but Notre Dame was playing in Indiana and not Michigan! Even so, plans were made for a poisoning of Ann Arbor, but paranoia on the part of Abraham brought him to Ypsilanti and Capel's help provided the rest.

For years, there would be debate as to how exactly Capel gave up this information. (Capel claimed he was waterboarded.) In any case, Capel's militia training failed to protect him against whatever form of advanced interrogation was used. (Theory two was that he sang like a bird, but told the "they tortured me" story to try to make himself a better martyr for the Dominionists.) Whatever they did, the rush into Capel's home indicated that someone wasn't kidding.

The US Government released Elijah Abraham's name and face the same day as a suspect in the Ypsilanti bombing. Federal officials knew that when they began collapsing the Dominionist network, it was likely that he and his followers would take flight. Enhanced security was brought to the US-Canadian border. News and social media exploded in wild speculation. Elijah Abraham had become the most famous name since Osama bin Laden - his name and photograph were on television 24-7 - but the attention he brought to his cause was not the kind that anyone would want.

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

The long off-season is over! After months of waiting and one internet hard drive crash, we are now at the very doorstep of the 2012-13 season. As someone in Major League might put it, "Actual women's basketball is actually being played!"

I'll close with two screen captures. The first is the gameplan screen for 2012-13. Our offense goes through our two best recruits, Catalina Stewart

and Abigail Merkle.

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/8428/201213gameplan.jpg

The other screen capture is the training screen. I tried to leave this one alone. I accepted the recommendations (I think), pulling points out of stamina for the most part. (Good players won't mind the loss, and hopefully I have the talent to leave bad players on the bench where they won't need it.) Those points went either into inside shooting (posts), jump shooting (guards) or ball handling (point guards).

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/1637/201213training.jpg

Next time: The start of the 2012-13 season! At last!

masterofnone · January 12, 2012

I am so ready for some basketball. That said, I really enjoy the characterizations you give the different players, be they nervous (Crumley), reserved (Harrington), naive (Merkle), crazy (Matz), etc.

Also, based on the electoral map you show, flipping Michigan wouldn't have been sufficient for a Republican victory - they still lose 270-268 in that case.)

Petrel · January 15, 2012

November 2012

WBCA Top 25

   #  Team                      FPV  Record  Points  Prv
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1.  Baylor                   (71)     0-0    1799  
  2.  Notre Dame                        0-0    1726 
  3.  Ohio State                (1)     0-0    1622  
  4.  Oklahoma                          0-0    1582  
  5.  Connecticut                       0-0    1501  
  6.  Stanford                          0-0    1385  
  7.  Tennessee                         0-0    1357  
  8.  Duke                              0-0    1265  
  9.  Texas A&M                         0-0    1207  
 10.  Maryland                          0-0    1072

I suppose that Ohio State must have voted for itself. Baylor was the #1 team coming into 2012-13, with senior shooting guard Mattie Moeller scoring 12.8 ppg last year, going 90-227 from the 3-point line. Baylor and Texas A&M had a little spat in the off-season with the Aggies departing for the SEC, but both teams will meet this year on November 30th.

The upsets started early. I don't think you could have called East Tennessee State's 70-62 defeat of Connecticut in the Preseason WNIT much of an upset - the Lady Bucs were undefeated in the Atlantic Sun the previous season and finished 30-4 for the yeaer, losing in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. But given the wailing and gnashing of teeth out of Storrs, you'd have thought the world had ended. To be beaten by an Atlantic Sun team?

#4 Oklahoma - National Finalists the year before - would lose to #18 Louisville 92-78 at the Dead River Classic in Maine. It looked like there would be a lot of movement in the polls.

(* * *)

Eastern Kentucky (0-0) at South Dakota (0-0)

At long last basketball. If there was something we didn't cover in preparing for the 2012-13 season, it was too damn late now.

On paper, it was a matchup of two miserable teams. Last year, EKU was probably a Bottom 25 team if there was such a thing. They finished 7-22 overall and 5-13 in the OVC. When I grew up, Eastern Kentucky was the closest NCAA Division I team next to us...and was frequently ignored in favor of the Wildcats of Kentucky.

But I had a great fondness for Richmond. For one thing, they were in a "wet" county where they sold alcohol. (Kentucky still had the wet-dry county system in the late 20th century.) My teammates and I would drive long miles to Richmond, to hang out with the sorority girls at EKU and have a few beers.

In a lot of ways, they were like us. There were some diamonds there. Eden Luther was a point guard who was All-Academic in the OVC and had flashes of greatness. SF Chloe Duncan and freshman PG Nataile Randel had promise. I really did not want to lose our first game of the year to the Lady Colonels - this was a game that by all rights, we should win.

South Dakota 63, Eastern Kentucky 38

Eastern Kentucky (0-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Eden Luther       C    24   2-3   1-1   0   1   0  4   5
Leilah Shin       PF   29   4-8   2-4   0   3   1  2  10
Christine Goode   SF   30  1-10   2-2   2   3   1  2   4
Chloe Duncan      SG   29   2-5   0-0   2   8   1  2   5
Natalie Randel    PG   24  3-10   1-1   0   1   0  3   7
Angela Enciso     PG   24   0-9   3-4   1   1   3  3   3
Chloe Torres      PF   19   0-0   0-0   1   2   1  1   0
Ana Abernethy     C     9   2-2   0-0   1   1   0  1   4
Ella Morrow       SG    6   0-1   0-0   0   2   0  0   0
Charlotte Eaves   C     1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Audriana Suttles  SF    4   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  2   0

Turnovers: 13 (E.Luther 2, L.Shin 1, C.Goode 1, 
C.Duncan 2, N.Randel 4, C.Torres 1, E.Morrow 1, 
A.Suttles 1)
Blocked Shots: 4 (L.Shin 2, A.Abernethy 1, A.Suttles 1)
Steals: 1 (C.Duncan 1)
3P FGs: 1-13 (C.Goode 0-6, C.Duncan 1-2, N.Randel 0-3, 
A.Enciso 0-2)

South Dakota (1-0)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    26   0-3   2-2   5   9   1  2   2
C. Harrington     PF   23   2-4   3-4   3   6   0  2   8
Jessica Bing      SF   20   2-6   2-2   1   2   1  4   6
Catalina Stewart  SG   30  5-14   2-2   0   8   5  1  14
Abagail Merkle    PG   23   3-3   2-2   1   5   0  1   8
Allison Riggle    PG   10   2-3   0-0   0   2   1  1   4
Maliah Lewellen   PF   19   0-3   2-2   1   1   0  1   2
Bella Grier       SF   16   1-3   3-7   0   2   2  2   5
Ashley Brown      C    15   2-4   0-0   0   2   0  0   4
Anzhelika Bure    SG    6   3-3   0-0   1   2   0  0   6
Jillian Ho        PG   11   1-1   2-2   0   2   1  2   4
Adalyn Matz       SF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Leah Alexander    PF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 14 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 2, 
C.Stewart 2, A.Merkle 3, A.Riggle 2, M.Lewellen 1, 
J.Ho 1)
Blocked Shots: 4 (C.Harrington 2, J.Bing 1, M.Lewellen 
1)
Steals: 7 (C.Stewart 4, A.Merkle 1, M.Lewellen 1, 
A.Bure 1)
3P FGs: 3-10 (C.Harrington 1-1, C.Stewart 2-6, 
M.Lewellen 0-2, A.Brown 0-1)

It looks like that training in the man-to-man defense has paid off. We killed the Lady Colonels, holding them to just 29.2 percent shooting. The Lady Colonels led 5-2 early on, but we took a 15-2 run after that and so much for the visitors. We led 32-16 at halftime and Eastern Kentucky was never in the game. We killed them on the boards, too, with a 41-22 rebounding edge. Lots of players got playing time.

Catalina Stewart looked good. She led the team in minutes, had 14 points, eight rebounds and four steals. She also had five assists to just two turnovers. Stewart, for her shyness, must have been eager to get out there and she really stuck it to Eastern Kentucky.

There was some bad luck, however. Allison Riggle got hurt. Riggle was our starting point guard for last year. She had complained about foot problems before the game and we made sure she was taped up well because she was just as eager to get out there as anyone. I told her that she'd come off the bench.

So who do you put at PG? Last year's backup Jillian Ho? Who did I feel comfortable with?

Would you believe Abigail Merkle? Two years in JUCO made me feel confident that she was a disciplined player that could run our (admittedly, very simple) offense. In an unfamiliar role - I would slide the 6-0 Merkle in between the one and the four which caused EKU no end of confusion - she had eight points and five rebounds, shooting 3-for-3.

The bad news was that Riggle went out. Late in the second half, she drove to the basket from the key and just collapsed, clutching that bandaged left foot. X-rays revealed a fracture. She was blaming herself all the way to the training room - she later told us that she had hurt her foot in practice the day before but kept her pain to herself.

That meant that Riggle would be out for an entire month. This led me to think, "Can Abigail Merkle really play point guard?" I was left to deal with a big hole in my roster. While thinking about that, I'd have to squeeze in another visit to Bloomington to court Sofia Owens yet a third time.

(* * *)

This visit had to be squeezed in just before Thanksgiving. There was a full week between the Eastern Kentucky game and the following game (away, against Campbell). However, after the Eastern Kentucky game Caitlyn Williams and I were looking for the first plane to Indiana.

There was nothing left to tell Owens. This visit was a babysitting visit, what I called an "ear****" visit where we would once again whisper sweet nothings into Sofia Owens's ear and try to sway her into wearing a South Dakota uniform. This was our third visit and I was starting to get tired of the courtship.

I knew who held the gate here. The mother. We watched film of our win this year over Eastern Kentucky and I pointed out where Sofia could help us in the post. "Harrington, Merkle - they're upperclassmen. I won't have them for much longer, and someone has to step into their shoes." While I narrated, I kept half an eye open watching any sign of movement from Mrs. Owens. Caitlyn and I suspected that Mrs. Owens was the reason Sofia hadn't signed already.

"So when are you going to sign a National Letter of Intent?" I asked. "You can't keep us waiting all year."

"I just haven't made my mind up, Coach Hawkins," Sofia said.

"Okay. Then do you mind if we play a little game?"

"Sure." I had Sofia's attention, and her mother perked up.

"You've probably heard a lot of crap - or thought some bad things - about South Dakota. I want you to pretend that you're some coach or person badmouthing USD. Just for fun, take some stabs at us. I just want to hear what, you know other people are saying."

Sofia's mother definitely perked up. Before Mrs. Owens could say anything, Sofia jumped in. "They say you're losers. That you don't win ball games."

Caitlyn smiled. "Losers? Last year we finished 7-11 in the Summit League with a bunch of nobodies and with Coach Hawkins's first year as a head coach. We played one of the toughest schedules available, including Tennessee at Tennessee, and we didn't stink there. We didn't win, but we didn't stink. You put Middle Tennessee against the teams we faced, and I'll bet they might have lost a few of those wins."

"Well," Mrs. Owens said, almost as if forced to.

"The state is full of religious nuts."

"I guess that's why South Dakota State hired the only lesbian head coach in Division I." (Hey, it wasn't negative recruiting. Rather, it pointed out that South Dakota was actually in the 21st century.)

"You'll be snowed in and you'll be bored all the time and you can't go anywhere."

"Funny, we manage to hold classes somehow. South Dakota students seem to know how to have fun. Winter snow skiing in the Black Hills."

Mrs. Owens couldn't contain herself. "Didn't your basketball stadium's dome collapse due to snowfall thirty years ago? Twice."

Mrs. Owens was referring to two collapses of the DakotaDome, in 1979 and 1982. After those collapses, the fiberglass dome was replaced with steel. I had to laugh. "Mrs. Owens," I said, "you can't blame me for that. I wasn't even born then!"

(* * *)

As we left Owens's house, Caitlyn said, "Well, she knows that we know. And now everyone knows the score."

"Maybe next time she'll say something and not leave her daughter as her mouthpiece."

"She might have a whole new list of complaints next time."

"Fine. Bring them on," I said. "You know, I'm getting really tired of coming out here. The Owenses really need to crap or get off the pot. But I know they can't be happy with MTSU, because if Middle Tennessee were all that, they would have already signed. I can tell that Sofia wants to play for us and her mother doesn't want it."

"That negativity might not have helped," Caitlyn said.

"Sitting on it won't help," I said. "Everyone knows the score now. Sign, already, dammit. I've got work to do."

(* * *)

The team go to enjoy Thanksgiving together. It appeared that nine players would remain on campus for Thanksgiving and the rest - the native South Dakotans - split up across the state. It seemed that everyone on the team was getting along well, although most of the out-of-state players were my players, players that I had recruited.

The only plaer that didn't seem to get along with people was Maliah Lewellen, my walk on. She seemed to rub people the wrong way. She asserted a status that she didn't really have. I treated Lewellen like any other player but the problem was that Lewellen didn't treat all the other players alike. There was a sort of an "I'm better than you" attitude about her, and the playing time I gave her merely reinforced that.

The theme with Lewellen was the same one every time: "I'm persecuted/everyone else is picking on me." Just before Thanksgiving, Lewellen told me in my office a tale of woe about how the other players were shutting her out.

"They don't show me any consideration! They make me wait in the shower!" Most of Lewellen's tales - when deciphered - led a listener to conclude that the slight she received was the result of a slight she gave. No wonder they were shutting her out; she was driving them crazy.

Odds were that unless Lewellen could turn things around - or unless we had a fantastic year - Lewellen would probably lose her walk-on status at the end of the season.

(* * *)

South Dakota (1-0) at Campbell (0-1)

On November 24, we made a flight to North Carolina to play the Lady Camels of Campbell. Campbell was a horrible team the previous season - a 6-23 team the previous year in the Atlantic Sun conference. This was their first year in the Big South after almost two decades away from the conference.

But Campbell was slightly better than Eastern Kentucky - and we were on their home turf for their home opener and without Alison Riggle. The next quiz had become that much tougher.

Campbell 83, South Dakota 76 (OT)

South Dakota (1-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    32   1-5   3-5   4  14   4  2   5
C. Harrington     PF   26   4-5   1-1   2   9   3  3   9
Jessica Bing      SF   33  7-13   4-5   4   7   5  1  18
Catalina Stewart  SG   37  3-13   2-2   2   4   2  3   9
Abagail Merkle    PG   29 10-17   0-0   0   3   5  1  20
Maliah Lewellen   PF   23   1-3   0-0   1   2   0  3   2
Bella Grier       PF   17   3-4   0-0   0   1   0  1   6
Ashley Brown      PF    8   0-1   3-4   0   1   0  0   3
Anzhelika Bure    SG    2   1-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   2
Jillian Ho        PG   16   0-3   2-2   0   2   0  2   2
Adalyn Matz       SF    2   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 11 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 2, J.Bing 2, 
C.Stewart 2, B.Grier 2, J.Ho 1)
Blocked Shots: 4 (A.Choe 2, A.Merkle 1, J.Ho 1)
Steals: 1 (A.Merkle 1)
3P FGs: 1-10 (C.Harrington 0-1, C.Stewart 1-5, A.Merkle 
0-2, M.Lewellen 0-1, J.Ho 0-1)

Campbell (1-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Olivia Robbins    C    33   6-8   0-2   2   9   2  3  14
Dylan Leonard     PF   33   2-3   2-4   1   4   3  2   6
Emily Doody       SF   39  9-19   0-0   1   2   1  2  23
Victoria Motta    SG   36  5-15   2-3   0   8   4  2  13
Nevaeh Browne     PG   36  5-13   2-2   1   1   3  3  14
Paisley Blank     SG   15   1-1   0-0   0   1   3  0   2
Lara Clarke       PG    9   0-1   2-2   0   0   0  2   2
Charlee Eccles    C    14   2-4   1-1   2   4   0  0   5
Lizeth Amaya      PF   10   1-2   0-0   0   1   0  2   2
Alexis Chalfant   SF    1   0-0   2-2   0   0   0  0   2

Turnovers: 7 (O.Robbins 1, D.Leonard 1, E.Doody 1, 
V.Motta 1, N.Browne 1, L.Amaya 2)
Blocked Shots: 2 (C.Eccles 2)
Steals: 2 (E.Doody 1, V.Motta 1)
3P FGs: 10-26 (O.Robbins 2-2, E.Doody 5-10, V.Motta 
1-7, N.Browne 2-6, L.Clarke 0-1)

Player of Game: SF Emily Doody (CPBL)

When you're half a continent away from home playing on someone else's home turf, it's going to be hard to win games. Particularly when you go to overtime. However, this was a game we should have one.

We had a 41-33 lead at halftime and I was very excited about Abigail Merkle's point guard contributions. She was on fire out there on the court, and brought big size (in the women's game) to the point guard position. But the Lady Camels came back in the second, closed to within a couple of baskets with about 10 minutes left, and we couldn't push them back.

They decided to shoot from long range, and they should shoot, going 10-for-26 from 3-point range. SF Emily Doody - the player of the game - hit a 3-pointer with 3:22 to go in the second to put Campbell up 63-62. From then on, it was life and death. With four seconds left, we led 66-65 and had the ball. The Lady Camels sent us to the foul line, where Ashley Brown sank two. 68-65, four seconds left, and time to play defense.

They put it in Emily Doody's hand for the tie. We put Caroline Harrington on Doody - my mistake - because I didn't want to put freshman Catalina Stewart on Doody. Doody drove right down the court, shook Harrington, found her spot on the wing and nailed the 3-pointer at the buzzer. Tie game, 68-68.

We were down 79-76 in overtime with 2:43 left...and then, we lost our composure. We committed five fouls in the overtime period, one stupid foul right after the other. (I'm not counting the fouls we had to commit to get the ball. The team simply crumbled under the pressure, killed by their own mistakes. We were 0-for-2 in the shots we took; the trips to the line that Campbell took were enough to seal it.

Was I happy that we were competitive? Hell no. You only get thirty or so chances to win a basketball game during a season. We let that one blow by us. We'd have two games the following week, and we had just increased the curve for difficulty. The thought of a 1-13 non-conference season danced before me.

November 27, 2012

Murray State (0-4) at South Dakota (1-1)

We had a grand total of three days to mourn our loss. Next up - the visiting Racers of Murray State.

It was true that Murray State had lost all of its first four games after finishing 15-15 the year before. But I wasn't going to be fooled by Murray State's record. They had a decent freshman shooting guard named Abigail Brown, the counterpart to our Catalina Stewart. Furthermore, those losses weren't by much. Two were on a neutral court, and one was away. The home loss against Memphis was a one-point loss, 59-58. Their point differential was only -8 points over four games. That meant that this was a team that was ready to knock someone off, a someone which could be us.

Abigail Merkle and Catalina Stewart had average 14.0 and 11.5 points per game. "Don't let the Racers spoil what we've got going on," I said. "Execute the plan, shoot at the right time. Keep doing what you're doing, and you can win this one." But it would be better if both Merkle and Stewart had good games.

Murray State 65, South Dakota 59

Murray State (1-4)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Madison Wickham   C    27   3-4   2-2   0   5   0  1   8
Addison Olsen     PF   28   2-4   2-2   0   5   0  3   6
Angela Bookout    SF   27  6-15   4-5   5   6   1  1  17
Abigail Brown     SG   32   0-4   0-0   0   2   3  3   0
Emelia Winters    PG   27  3-10   1-2   1   4   1  3   8
Charlie Mancini   PG   25   4-5   3-4   0   1   6  3  12
Lillian Lebel     PG    5   1-2   0-0   0   0   0  1   3
Molly Moore       PF   14   2-4   5-6   3   7   1  3   9
Elizabeth Byrd    SF    4   0-2   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Giada Henry       C    11   1-3   0-1   1   3   1  1   2

Turnovers: 9 (M.Wickham 1, A.Bookout 3, A.Brown 1, 
E.Winters 1, C.Mancini 1, G.Henry 2)
Blocked Shots: 2 (A.Bookout 2)
Steals: 4 (M.Wickham 1, E.Winters 1, M.Moore 1, E.Byrd 
1)
3P FGs: 4-15 (A.Bookout 1-6, A.Brown 0-2, E.Winters 
1-4, C.Mancini 1-2, L.Lebel 1-1)

South Dakota (1-2)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    27   4-6   4-7   8  15   2  2  12
C. Harrington     PF   26   1-8   0-0   2   6   2  2   3
Jessica Bing      SF   28   3-9   0-0   1   2   1  3   8
Catalina Stewart  SG   31   6-9   1-2   1   6   3  2  16
Abagail Merkle    PG   26   4-9   2-3   0   5   1  0  10
Maliah Lewellen   C    18   0-4   2-2   0   2   1  4   2
Bella Grier       PF   12   0-3   3-4   2   2   1  1   3
Ashley Brown      PF   10   1-3   0-0   0   1   1  2   2
Anzhelika Bure    SG    6   0-1   2-2   0   0   1  1   2
Jillian Ho        PG   14   0-3   1-2   2   2   0  1   1
Adalyn Matz       SF    1   0-0   0-0   1   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 15 (A.Choe 2, C.Stewart 5, A.Merkle 2, 
M.Lewellen 3, B.Grier 1, A.Bure 1, J.Ho 1)
Blocked Shots: 2 (A.Choe 1, A.Merkle 1)
Steals: 2 (A.Merkle 1, A.Brown 1)
3P FGs: 6-11 (C.Harrington 1-1, J.Bing 2-3, C.Stewart 
3-5, A.Merkle 0-1, B.Grier 0-1)

Player of Game: PG Charlie Mancini (MRYST)

This game left me very depressed about the state of our teams. Not merely because we were 1-2 and that had my bubble punctured in thinking that we were going to be substantially better, but for other reasons.

We had a lot of problems. The Racers threw a lot of looks at us - 2-3, 2-1-2 and 3-2 all night. Rarely did they play us straight up, only when absolutely necessary. This really confused our team, which really hadn't seen a defensively complex team. Given that the team has so many inadequacies, it's hard to prepare them for it. You need a practice team to play those kind of defenses and we have no practice squad other than ourselves. So we struggled in shooting.

We outrebounded them. We held Abigail Brown scoreless. Angelina Choe had 15 rebounds. But it was in turnovers where we lost. Stewart scored 16 points and six rebounds but she turned the ball over five times. Our lack of depth showed, with four players (Lewellen, Grier, Bure, Ho) combining for 0-for-11.

The closeness of these two losses really disturbed me. When you get beat by 20, it's your team's fault. When you get beat by six or less, it's your fault. Sometimes you could feel their anguish in losing coming white hot off the floor. Sometimes, you could see them listless sitting on the bench like a man waiting for his execution. There was some kind of disconnect and I couldn't tell what it was.

We were 1-3. Was it me? Was I a shitty coach? Had I been focused too hard on recruiting? Were my coaches inadequate? Where was the problem?

I said very little after the loss, which must have thrown the team in a panic. When your coach has nothing to say, that's serious business. I went right back into my office and dived into game film, not going to bed until 3:30 am that morning.

November 29, 2012

South Dakota (1-2) at Utah State (1-1)

Looking at the film more closely, I felt we had a chance against Utah State. Last year, they were a 15-16 team - nothing special and their roster was definitely nothing special. Aside from a pair of players - junior PG Aileen Saville and freshman PF Sylvia Snelling - they were a random collection of second-rank players from Utah high school teams; the players that played in Utah because there was no demand for them to play anywhere else.

I made the decision to "bring it down" a little bit and stick to the plan, to focus on the teachable moments. I needed to get my team's attention back. Catalina Stewart was a hard worker, but she had a tendency to give the ball up too easily. Utah State should bring the problems on offense that Murray State did - the Aggies played a strict man-to-man defense, the kind of defense our players should know inside and out.

Loooking at our film, I really missed sophomore PG Alison Riggle. She was apparently the best recruit in the last year of the previous coaching staff which never got to see her play. I was glad that Riggle was hanging in there with us; we wanted her back.

South Dakota 66, Utah State 47

South Dakota (2-2)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    29   5-6   1-3   4  10   2  1  11
C. Harrington     PF   25   3-4   0-0   1   3   1  2   7
Jessica Bing      SF   33  8-13   2-3   3   5   2  3  18
Catalina Stewart  SG   34   4-9   2-2   2   7   2  2  12
Abagail Merkle    PG   27  3-10   1-2   0   2   1  1   7
Maliah Lewellen   C    17   0-0   3-4   1   3   2  2   3
Bella Grier       PF   11   0-2   2-4   0   4   1  2   2
Ashley Brown      C     5   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  0   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    4   0-2   0-0   1   1   0  0   0
Jillian Ho        PG   13   3-4   0-0   0   1   0  2   6
Adalyn Matz       SF    3   0-1   0-0   1   2   0  0   0

Turnovers: 9 (A.Choe 3, J.Bing 1, C.Stewart 3, B.Grier 
2)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 3 (C.Stewart 1, J.Ho 2)
3P FGs: 3-10 (C.Harrington 1-1, J.Bing 0-1, C.Stewart 
2-5, A.Bure 0-2, A.Matz 0-1)

Utah State (1-2)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Bella Hudnall     C    31   4-5   0-1   3   6   1  0   8
Josie Sansone     PF   26   1-4   5-6   0   4   2  3   7
Athena Unruh      SF   29  2-14   1-1   2   2   0  4   5
Kai Svoboda       SG   31   3-6   1-2   0   5   3  3   8
Aileen Saville    PG   33   4-7   2-3   1   1   4  3  13
Beatrice Simpson  SF   18   2-3   0-1   0   3   0  0   4
Tori Halvorson    C    11   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  4   0
Mia Hunt          C     6   0-3   0-0   1   2   1  0   0
Paige Quattlebaum PF    3   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Araceli Huff      PG   11   1-1   0-0   0   0   1  1   2
Brinley McCalla   SF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 10 (B.Hudnall 3, A.Unruh 1, K.Svoboda 1, 
A.Saville 3, B.Simpson 1, A.Huff 1)
Blocked Shots: 2 (J.Sansone 1, A.Saville 1)
Steals: 4 (B.Hudnall 1, A.Saville 2, B.Simpson 1)
3P FGs: 4-20 (J.Sansone 0-3, A.Unruh 0-8, K.Svoboda 
1-3, A.Saville 3-6)

Player of Game: SF Jessica Bing (SD)

That was what we needed and we needed it in a big way. The key to the game was an early 13-2 run by the Yotes. "You've seen this before! You see it every day in practice! So treat it like practice!" And with that, they began to beat up on the Aggies the way they've beat up on each other in practice.

Catalina Stewart still had three turnovers. I'm suspecting there's an over/under on turnovers. I just haven't figured out that magic number of turnovers we need to keep Stewart under to have a chance at winning.

We shot the lights out on the for a .510 shooting percentage. They had no 3-point threat with which to counter, and we beat them in the turnover part of the game. (By one turnovers.) Junior SF Jessica Bing came through for us with 18 points.

We were now 2-2. We had won more non-conference games (2) than we had one last year (1). Montana State might also be a win coming up. Lauren Word, our AID, came up to me and said "Congratulations, Coach!"

"Thanks!" I said, thinking about the game.

"That was your 10th lifetime win at USD!" she said.

"Oh." I didn't think it was that significant. "And how many have I lost here?"

"Twenty-four," she said.

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

Other than the fact that it took me two seasons to win my 10th game, no notes. No world news. No pictures either. But the season is definitely underway.

masterofnone · January 16, 2012

And we're underway.

Two things jump out at me here: first of all, for not being so highly regarded, Choe has 48 boards in the first 4 games (and double-doubles in the last 2).

Second of all, if you don't beat Montana State, win #3 might be a loooong time in coming...

Good job, I really like this.

Petrel · January 20, 2012

December 2012

After our visit to Sofia Owens, we still hadn't heard much. We continued to get the same assurances that we were in the mix. One of the most difficult parts of being a coach may be the "hurry up and wait" part. You can plan and plan and plan but never really know how things play out until you get there.

While we were all-in on Owens, our name fell off the list of Breanna Vanscoy's favorites at ESPN Rise. Eastern Michigan, Dayton and St. Bonaventure had all made offers. Duke and Pittsburgh were sniffing around. It looked like the window of opportunity had closed on Vanscoy. Our hope was that it would open on Owens.

December 1, 2012 - Montana State (0-3) at South Dakota (2-2)

When you learn that the prediction in the Montana newspapers - I have to do a bit of internet research - is that the Bobcats have a "50-50" chance of winning this game despite going 0-3, it had to give me pause. Either we were awful or underestimated. But I remember what happened the last time a team with no wins came to the DakotaDome.

Interesting fact: their previous game was against Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne (IPFW), one of our Summit League opponents. They lost 68-50 to the Mastodons and had a 68-65 home loss to St. Peters.

Once again, they looked a lot like us. They were 13-20 last year. They definitely had height - but averaged 20 fouls a game over those three losses. It could come down to which team is a better free throw shooting team. Catalina Stewart was hitting 87 percent of her shots at the line, they had PF April Howard who had hit 75 percent.

Montana State 74, South Dakota 40

Montana State (1-3)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Mia West          C    26   3-3   3-4   4  16   4  3   9
Claire Butler     PF   24   2-5   1-2   1   3   0  1   6
April Howard      SF   28  6-12   2-4   2   5   1  3  14
Joyce Lawlor      SG   28  7-10   1-3   0   3   0  2  20
Ava Salazar       PG   26   1-5   2-2   1   3   3  2   4
Mylee Cooney      PG   22   1-6   4-4   0   4   2  2   6
Sienna Ludwig     SG   17   2-4   2-3   0   0   2  3   7
Amaya Mebane      SF   10   2-2   2-2   1   3   1  2   6
Kallie Barbieri   C     9   0-0   0-0   0   2   1  0   0
Makayla Wheaton   PF    7   0-0   0-0   1   2   1  1   0
Evelyn Applegate  SF    2   0-0   2-2   0   0   0  0   2

Turnovers: 7 (M.West 2, C.Butler 1, J.Lawlor 1, 
A.Salazar 2, M.Cooney 1)
Blocked Shots: 2 (A.Howard 1, A.Salazar 1)
Steals: 3 (M.Cooney 3)
3P FGs: 7-16 (C.Butler 1-2, A.Howard 0-1, J.Lawlor 5-7, 
A.Salazar 0-2, M.Cooney 0-1, S.Ludwig 1-3)

South Dakota (2-3)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    20   1-6   0-0   2   4   0  4   2
C. Harrington     PF   22   2-6   3-6   4   7   1  2   8
Jessica Bing      SF   27   2-9   2-2   1   4   2  1   6
Catalina Stewart  SG   28   2-7   4-4   0   2   3  1   9
Abagail Merkle    PG   22   1-6   2-2   1   4   1  2   4
Maliah Lewellen   PF   18   2-7   1-1   1   2   0  3   5
Bella Grier       PF   16   1-1   0-0   0   1   0  3   3
Ashley Brown      C    16   0-4   0-0   0   0   0  2   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    7   0-1   1-2   0   0   1  2   1
Jillian Ho        PG   18   0-0   2-2   0   1   0  2   2
Adalyn Matz       SF    3   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  1   0
Leah Alexander    PF    2   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Analia Williams   C     1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 12 (A.Choe 1, C.Harrington 2, C.Stewart 1, 
A.Merkle 1, M.Lewellen 1, B.Grier 2, A.Bure 1, J.Ho 3)
Blocked Shots: 1 (M.Lewellen 1)
Steals: 3 (C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 1, C.Stewart 1)
3P FGs: 3-9 (C.Harrington 1-2, C.Stewart 1-3, A.Merkle 
0-1, M.Lewellen 0-2, B.Grier 1-1)

Player of Game: SG Joyce Lawlor (MT ST)

That game was a nightmare. There is no better way to put it. I did not expect a 34-point loss on home. Early in the game, the Bobcats went on a 13-2 run. They never looked back. They were up by over 20 at halftime. We fell further behind in the second half. What happened?

They played a freaking 3-2 zone! Three on the perimeter! And they outrebounded us 41-26! Son of a bitch!

I was absolutely furious after the game. I was madder than a firecracker. "How dare you? How dare you let two teams come into the DakotaDome with a combined record of 0-7 and just own you? You just GAVE UP out there! You didn't show and passion! You didn't play Yote basketball! You let everyone down, you let your families down, you let your friends down and you let every unfortunate spectator out there down who paid good money to see his or her alma mater lose by 34 points!"

"This isn't some sort of ice cream social! This is basketball, and I didn't grant you scholarships because you were a polite bunch of girls? 41-26 in rebounding? Four rebounds, Angelina? You let #20 (C Mia West) just dominate you! Sixteen ****ing rebounds!"

"They committed 19 fouls! But we couldn't finish because we committed 23!"

To add insult to injury, with 1:30 or so left - garbage time - Montana State put in a junior named Evelyn Appelgate. Applegate drove through the key and slammed an elbow right into Adalyn Matz, who hit the ground with a bloodied (and broken) nose.

So then I decided to let the referees have it. I'm surprised I didn't get a technical. They probably thought there'd be no point to throw a T at someone who was down by 35 points with 90 seconds to go.

We're going to work on our shooting. (Coach Ulmer talked me out of making them run laps out the DakotaDome.) That was our last home game for a month. We're going to run The Gauntlet now - seven straight away games against Hampton, Washington, BYU, UCLA, Maryland, Duke and Connecticut. We are looking at 2-10 going into conference play; winning any of those games will be a miracle.

(* * *)

During this disaster, we had to work out recruiting issues. The plan was to give Owens yet another visit on December 9th and to visit Isabella "Z" Crumley on December 23. The moment the Washington game was over my plan was to fly from Washington to Indiana with Caitlyn Williams to visit Owens and her family yet again.

At about 9 am, my cell phone rang. It was Sofia Owens. This could either be good news or bad news, I told myself. It was rare that Owens had initiated a call.

"Hello, Sofia," I said. "What's up?"

There was a bit of silence before she spoke up. "Coach Hawkins," she said, "I've decided to sign with Middle Tennessee."

I felt like I had been punched in the throat. "Have you signed anything?" I asked.

"We just faxed the letter of intent to Middle Tennessee this morning."

That was it. We were now technically bound to no longer recruit Owens. Middle Tennesseee had her, and South Dakota didn't. "Sofia, I've only got one question for you. Was this your decision?"

The silence told me everything I needed to know. "Sofia, I wish you the best of luck at Middle Tennessee. You would have made a great addition to South Dakota. I just have one thing to tell you. You have to do things for yourself, and not for other people. You can't be miserable for four years just because someone thousands of miles away might be unhappy. If they're unhappy with a decision this fundamental, imagine how unhappy they're going to be with any other decision that's important to you."

There was just silence at the other end of the phone. "Are you there, Sofia?"

"Uh huh."

"It took a lot of guts to call. I'll give you that. Best of luck to you. Goodbye." And then I hung up with more composure than I thought I'd have.

(* * *)

We had to go back to the drawing board that morning. "I don't understand it at all," Caitlyn Williams said. She looked dazed. Raelynn Reavis looked depressed, and Katie Ulmer looked sympathetic.

There wasn't much we could do about things. Our list of "gold standard" players had shrunked considerably - players that good were going to be snapped up. Jordan Wheelock was off to Texas Arlington. Nadia Mansfield? East Tennessee State? Audrey Fraga? Off to nearby San Diego State.

Breanna Vanscoy - who had more of an upside than any other player we had recruited - already had Eastern Michigan, Dayton and St. Bonaventure waiting with offers. The foreign players were indifferent to South Dakota - it didn't strike a Frenchwoman or Spaniard as a place in the USA they'd want to visit, much less play for. (Their loss - I was starting to warm up to my frozen little home.)

Expanding this list one "blue-chippers" forced me to significantly degrade my definition of "blue chip".Taylor Armstrong wasn't a blue-chipper, but she was All-State in Utah and only had interest from Utah State. Molly Scott scored 20.8 points of game but the only team knocking on the door was Boston University.

In the end, we settled on Aaliyah Gray. Why? She was from Colorado, so it wasn't inconceivable that she might want to attend USD. The schools that had made offers - Colorado State, Montana - were ones we were more likely to complete with than Middle Tennessee State, a high-ranking mid-major. Furthermore, she had the best rating from Kong, our recruiting software, which put her as being moderately interested.

"We'll spend three months on Gray," I told everyone, "before we throw in the towel. Caitlyn, set up a home visit."

"And after that?" she said. "Just in case it doesn't work out with Gray?"

"After that, we take whom we can get. If it's March and we don't have her sign, I'd say that train has rolled by."

(* * *)

As I was walking through campus, thinking about the gauntlet of away games we were preparing to run I came across a man carrying a sign.

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/5222/endoftheworld007300x180.jpg

December 2012 was a month for gloom and doom preachers. The Ypsilanti Massacre hadn't helped anything. America was still morning the deaths of over 3,000 people. There were remembrance signs everywhere. The part of the country that didn't vote for Obama - South Dakota was a red state - weren't in a happy mood. The economy was going nowhere. Elijah Abraham was still at large, and every water purification plant in the United States was being monitored by National Guardsmen.

And to top it all off, were were suffering from what I called "Mayan hysteria". Supposedly, the Mayan calendar foretold predicted doomsday on December 21, 2012. (That was our day off between UCLA and Maryland, so they might be right.) There was something to do with some calendar the Mayans had and the "Long Count". You couldn't watch The History Channel without seeing some documentary about the Mayans. Spike was running 2012 on a virtually endless loop. Christians were encouraging us to Get Right With Jesus. (Hey, as long as there's going to be doom-mongering....)

The overwhelming majority of people saw either humor or lunacy in the entire thing. Even so, it cast one more dark cloud over the end of the year. Most people would be relieved to see 2012 out the door.

(* * *)

December 6, 2012 - South Dakota (2-3) at Hampton (4-1)

For those who haven't heard of Hampton, it's in the MEAC Conference which is a conference of HBCUs - Historic Black Colleges and Universities. These kinds of school traditionally aren't that great but for low-level conferences Hampton was pretty good. They had won the previous years MEAC Tournament and finished with a loss in Round One of the NCAA tournament, closing with a 21-13 record. (Florida A&M - the team of Zoe McHale - was 0-4 and I was glad of it.)

Hampton had so much more potential among their players that it wasn't funny. Senior sG Cecilia Dowdell was the one to worry about, averaging 25.0 ppg among the four games the Pirates had played this year. She also averaged 6.8 rebounds per game, a double-threat. Their only loss of the year was a 62-47 loss to #16 Oklahoma, last year's national semifinalists on the road.

Adalyn Matz of the broken nose was day to day. Whether she'd play would be a game time decision.

Hampton 79, South Dakota 78

South Dakota (2-4)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    30   4-7   2-3   1  14   3  2  10
C. Harrington     PF   24   3-5   3-4   0   4   2  2  12
Jessica Bing      SF   26   6-9   0-0   0   2   3  3  12
Catalina Stewart  SG   33  5-10   1-3   0   1   2  1  13
Abagail Merkle    PG   26   3-5   7-9   0   1   4  3  14
Maliah Lewellen   PF   18   2-4   0-0   1   1   1  3   6
Bella Grier       SF   11   1-2   1-2   0   2   0  0   3
Ashley Brown      C    10   0-1   2-2   2   3   0  2   2
Anzhelika Bure    SG    6   0-0   0-0   0   1   1  0   0
Jillian Ho        PG   14   3-5   0-0   0   1   0  0   6
Leah Alexander    PF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 15 (A.Choe 1, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 3, 
C.Stewart 3, A.Merkle 2, A.Brown 2, A.Bure 1, J.Ho 2)
Blocked Shots: 2 (A.Merkle 1, A.Bure 1)
Steals: 1 (B.Grier 1)
3P FGs: 8-14 (C.Harrington 3-4, C.Stewart 2-5, A.Merkle 
1-2, M.Lewellen 2-3)

Hampton (5-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Alyssa Phillips   C    21   2-2   0-2   2   4   1  3   4
Kayla Rosenberg   PF   31   6-8   2-4   2   8   2  3  14
Reina Bingaman    SF   33  5-14   3-4   0   4   4  0  13
Cecelia Dowdell   SG   11  5-10   1-2   3   3   2  4  13
Laura Ervin       PG   32   3-8   3-4   1   2  10  4  10
Lillian Persinger PG   22   4-9   0-0   0   1   6  3  10
Hadley Nord       SG   17   3-5   2-2   0   2   0  4   8
Madison Reiser    C    14   1-2   0-0   1   1   2  1   2
Kenzie Bivins     SF    5   1-1   0-0   1   1   0  0   2
Alexandra Just    PF    6   0-1   0-0   0   1   0  1   0
Tatum Bartlett    C     8   0-1   3-4   1   3   0  0   3

Turnovers: 9 (K.Rosenberg 2, R.Bingaman 2, C.Dowdell 1, 
L.Ervin 1, L.Persinger 1, M.Reiser 1, A.Just 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 7 (R.Bingaman 2, C.Dowdell 1, L.Ervin 3, 
M.Reiser 1)
3P FGs: 5-15 (R.Bingaman 0-1, C.Dowdell 2-5, L.Ervin 
1-4, L.Persinger 2-3, H.Nord 0-2)

Player of Game: PG Laura Ervin (HAMPT)

So close. So freaking close. A win would have meant so much to this program but it wasn't going to happen. If this game had been played in Vermillion, we would have had the win.

Hampton decided to fool around with us a little bit. They knew we'd go after Cecelia Dowdell, so their goal was to move the ball around. But it looked like the Yotes were a bit embarrassed after that horrible showing against Montana State, and wanted to prove that they could play some ball. That first half of the game was about as tough as you could imagine and they hung in there against a tougher squad. We actually lead by three points late in the first half and took a 37-35 lead into halftime.

I told them, "Do exactly what you were doing in the first half, because they seem to have a lot of trouble with it." Our players could tell when Hampton was sagging on the man-to-man and Caroline Harrington and Catalina Stewart lit the Pirates up. We went on a 8-0 run early in the second and led 52-41, forcing Hampton to call a time out. (I don't think I saw Hampton's coach so animated. I think I heard the word "embarrassment.")

They fought back. We kept them at arms length for most of the game. Lilian Persinger hit a 3-pointer with 4:39 left to put the Pirates up by one for the first time in the half, 68-67. From then on, it was a battle of wills. We led 76-72 with two minutes left but we couldn't hold it.

With forty-seven seconds left Dowdell shoots a 3-pointer from the right wing to put Hampton up 77-76. It's our turn. We were looking for Abigail Merkle on the inside but they had her covered, and the Pirates virtually dared Bella Grier to shoot it. She found her way inside along the left baseline and banked it in to give the Yotes a 78-77 lead with 15 seconds left.

I figured that they'd try to give it to Dowdell to take the last shot. Sure enough, they find Dowdell who takes the shot from 3-point range - and misses it. If we rebound, we win.

No dice. Madison Reiser gets the rebound, kicks it out to Dowdell almost in the same spot, she steps a few feet in and with time expiring - she buries it. 79-78 on a last second shot and Hampton snatches victory from the jaws of defeat.

Hampton goes wild. We're crushed. For lack of a rebound, we lose the game. My only explanation is that the Women's Basketball Goddesses hate South Dakota.

"You had so much heart out there," I told my players. "There's going to be a day when we get those rebounds. But that day's not today. You won their respect out there. Next time, we'll earn more than just respect."

Senior Angelina Choe had another monster game. A double-double. How were we going to replace her when she graduated this year?

It was a brave face. I was devastated. This hurt as bad as the Murray State loss. But I had no time to cry; I had to get on a plane to the west coast to take on the University of Washington.

(* * *)

That night, I talked to my old coach, Ken Tomlinson. I told him about the loss.

"Yeah, I heard about that. Didn't watch it on TV though, it wasn't on, but I keep up with box scores. You're my only player that ever went into chick basketball, so you're everything I know about the subject."

"I can't help but feeling that I let those players down. For the first time I feel like I'm in over my head."

"Well, think about it, Mark," he said. "You have no experience as an assistant coach. You lucked into the job. It's not like coaching men players. This is the first time you've had to motivate other people, which is a lot different from motivating yourself. They say good players make bad coaches and vice versa, because a good coach knows that it's hard to movitate people."

"Yeah. I just feel like I should be doing more."

"What about your assistants? Are they on your side?"

"Yeah, but I don't think that Reavis or Ulmer do much more than run practices when I'm away. Their teaching skills are pretty spotty. Williams doesn't contribute anything outside of recruiting, and she's not been much help there this year."

"Yeah," Ken said. "You know, you're going to have to fire someone, soon."

"Some other coach at USD told me that."

"Well, I'm telling it to you. You can't do all of this by yourself. Remember that joke about the coach who gets a basketball job and the old coach leaves three sealed envelopes in the desk drawer. "When you get into trouble," he says, "open those envelopes and you'll be all right."

"New coach has a bad first year. He opens envelope #1. "Blame the previous coach." So he does."

"Next year stinks. He opens envelope #2. "Shake up your staff." So he fires his assistants.

"Next year, he doesn't win a single game. He opens envelope #3. It says - !"

And we both said in unison. "Prepare three envelopes."

"I think you're getting to envelope #2. Do you want to coach, Mark?"

"I do."

"Well, you can't help those kids if you're not there. You need to figure out what you're doing to do. If there's dead weight, I'd get rid of it."

(* * *)

December 8, 2012 - South Dakota (2-4) at Washington (2-1)

This was the less dangerous Huskies team we'd be playing this year. They had a 2-1 record but their wins were against Bethune-Cookman and Cal State Northridge, the latter which hasn't won a game all season. They lost by two to Portland State just three nights ago so we were both coming off close losses. Senior SG Marilyn Hampton led the way with 15.7 ppg and junior PF Reagan March added 8 ppg and 7 rpg.

Even so, we hoped that we could beat them on the boards, where they were weak. But I had no illusions this deep into the schedule. A win against a power conference team would be a win that we could take into the conference schedule - even into next year. But those wins were hard to get. Why do you think they're called power conferences?

Adalyn Matz was now fully recovered, wearing a mask. However, she had only played 10 minutes this season. I'd be surprised if she were the key to victory.

Last year the Huskies finished 15-16, but 5-13 in the Pac-Twelve. They failed to make the postseason and were hoing for big things this year.

Washington 65, South Dakota 42

South Dakota (2-5)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    28   2-5   2-3   2   7   1  2   6
C. Harrington     PF   25   3-5   2-3   2   5   0  2  10
Jessica Bing      SF   31   2-6   5-6   0   1   2  2   9
Catalina Stewart  SG   29   1-6   0-0   0   4   0  1   2
Abagail Merkle    PG   26   3-7   2-2   4   6   2  2   8
Maliah Lewellen   PF   18   0-2   0-0   0   2   0  0   0
Bella Grier       SF   14   0-3   2-2   0   0   1  2   2
Ashley Brown      PF   11   1-1   0-0   0   3   0  2   2
Anzhelika Bure    SG    3   0-0   0-0   0   0   1  1   0
Jillian Ho        PG   14   1-5   0-0   1   1   0  1   3
Leah Alexander    PF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 18 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 4, 
C.Stewart 4, A.Merkle 2, B.Grier 2, A.Brown 1, A.Bure 
1, J.Ho 1)
Blocked Shots: 1 (C.Harrington 1)
Steals: 3 (C.Stewart 1, B.Grier 2)
3P FGs: 3-11 (C.Harrington 2-3, J.Bing 0-1, C.Stewart 
0-4, B.Grier 0-1, J.Ho 1-2)

Washington (3-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Reagan March      C    17   1-2   0-0   2   4   0  3   2
Melody Comstock   PF   29  3-11   4-6   5   8   1  3  10
Lillian Lopez     SF   27  9-17   0-0   3   5   2  0  18
Adelaide Clark    SG   24   4-7   4-4   0   2   2  4  16
Marilyn Hampton   PG   27   2-5   4-4   1   3   2  1   8
Isabella Bulter   C    27   2-4   2-2   2   4   3  2   6
Adelyn Boger      SG   24   2-5   0-0   0   5   3  0   4
Hannah Janes      SF   13   0-3   0-0   2   3   1  1   0
Addison Rutland   PF    6   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  1   0
Isabela Plott     PG    1   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  1   0
Lillian Luu       SF    3   0-1   1-2   0   0   0  0   1
Emely Giegerich   C     1   0-0   0-0   0   0   1  0   0

Turnovers: 8 (L.Lopez 1, A.Clark 1, M.Hampton 1, 
I.Bulter 2, A.Boger 2, H.Janes 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 9 (L.Lopez 2, A.Clark 1, M.Hampton 1, A.Boger 
4, H.Janes 1)
3P FGs: 4-12 (A.Clark 4-6, M.Hampton 0-1, I.Bulter 0-1, 
A.Boger 0-2, H.Janes 0-2)

Player of Game: SF Lillian Lopez (WASH)

That went about as well as you can expect it to go. At this point, I'm not foolish enough to expect wins.

We actually managed to hang in there the first half. After Washington took a 13-3 lead we had to call a time out and get the team on same page, tying the game 18-18 with 4:18 in the first. They answered their own timeout with an 8-0 run and led 30-24 at the break.

I would have liked to know what their coach told them at halftime, because they answered with a 16-4 run. They held us to 32.5 percent shooting during the game, and we turned the ball over 18 times to their eight. It's going to be very hard winning under those circumstances.

Catalina Stewart had her worst game of the season. Two points, 1-for-6 shooting and four turnovers. Angelina Choe has considerably cooled down. I don't know how this team will be when Allison Riggle returns; frankly, I'm looking for someone to step up.

(* * *)

The team returned back to South Dakota to finish up any administrative work. The Fall Semester was over; I didn't hear a hint of any trouble. I wanted us to be focused and prepare for the game on Thursday in Utah against Brigham Young.

While practicing - and I swear, sometimes it's so loud you're almost in your own universe; I love the sound of a practice - I heard clapping and applause from outside the closed metal doors. It was some kind of raucous celebration.

I called a halt to practice and walked outside the doors waiting to give someone a piece of my mind. Maybe tell some cheerleaders to save it for game day.

Instead, there were a bunch of security personnel and stadium workers applauding. "They got the son of a bitch!" one shouted, and the ecstasy could only mean thing.

"They got him!" another one cried. "They got Elijah Abraham!"

Holy crap! "Is he - ?"

"They got him alive. He was hiding with his relatives up in Ohio. Man, they are going to fry his sorry ass!"

I walked back into practice. "TWo hour break!" I said. "They've captured Elijah Abraham!"

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/8402/ohioswat.jpg

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/9682/ohioswat2.jpg

On an overcast day, armed men surround the house of Abraham's first cousin in Grove City, Ohio. The operation took less than five minutes.

Oddly enough, it was another investigation that brought Grove City police to the presence of Abraham. The police department was investigating a series of home invasions. They also had been told by the FBI that Abraham's first cousin lived in Grove City, and the home invasions took place near the area. A woman had told a police officer that a "homeless man" was living in the home of Ella Bonelli, the first cousin previously named. Bonelli was a gardener that lived alone and Abraham had been helping her with some of her gardening, having grown a beard as a disguise.

It took about nine days for everyone to make the connection, an unconscionable amount of time. Abraham, however, didn't seem to be going anywhere. They got their warrant, cordoned the area, and burst in and took out Abraham who was unarmed.

The span of time from the Ypsilanti mass murder to Abraham's capture? 82 days. More people were killed in the hate crimes that occurred after Ypsilanti (one) than in the takeout of Abraham's network (zero). Every single one of Abraham's cult was captured alive.

It dominated the news, and for once, people were glad to be glued to their TV sets. It happened early in the morning at 9:13 am CST, and scientists reported a massive worldwide spike in internet use and in news network ratings.

President Obama gave a brief speech.

"This morning, December 9th, 2012, it became clear to the police department of Grove City Ohio that the leader of the Bosom of Abraham - Elijah Abraham - had taken up residence in a local home. State and federal officials were quickly mobilized as soon as credible information was received. Police surrounded the home and captured Abraham without incident. He was arrested by FBI officers at the scene and is currently in federal custody.

The capture of Abraham is a victory for the people of Ypsilanti and a victory for the Department of Homeland Security. Let any enemy of the United States - either foreign or domestic - be warned that justice shall be served."

It was barely two paragraphs. There would be detractors, of course. That the nine days before someone suspected Abraham was in Grove City and the time he was arrested was a sign of the incompetence of the federal government's investigation. That Obama should have said more. That he shouldn't have claimed victory on behalf of Ypsilanti. ("What, does he have a Michigan birth certificate?")

But the detractors had little ammo. Both Osama bin Laden and Elijah Abraham had been captured on Obama's watch, the two terrorists that had cost Americans the most lives. Obama's popularity rating spiked.

One question someone might have is that - given Abraham's ultra right-wing Christian worldview - if Americans had changed their perspectives on Christianity. Even though nonbelievers sited Abraham's dream of a Bible-ruled United States as a sign that organized religion supported such unstable personalities, most Americans were willing to write off Abraham as a fluke. There were some people who gave up attending church, but many of those were one step out the door anyway. Both sides threw statistics at each other pre-and-post Ypsilanti, nothing had changed.

But things had changed in Ypsilanti. Memorials still dotted every sign, every post. A fast-paced city like New York could mourn its losses quickly after 9-11, but Abraham's act would cast a grim pall over Ypsilanti for decades to come.

December 13, 2012 - South Dakota (2-5) at Brigham Young (5-4)

Last Year, the Cougars were tough. THey finished 24-9 overall and 11-5 in the West Coast Conference, good enough for a WNIT appearance where they lost in the first round. But this year, their 5-4 record didn't look too impressive. Two of their wins were against Northwestern State and Army, which had started the season a combined 0-13. Of their four losses, three were against teams that had a .500 or better record.

Part of Brigham Young's problem was that they had no height. They only had three players 6-2 and above, and those players didn't really contribute. They only averaged 1.1 block per game. And they fouled a lot, an average of 21.1 fouls a game.

They definitely had a couple of scorers in junior SG Alaysia Seaver (19.6 ppg) and freshan Jenny Plumber (16.9 ppg) but after that scoring dropped off quickly - those two players were almost half of the Cougars scoring offense. If Seavor or Plummer had a bad game - or better yet, if we could make them have a bad game - we might have a chance.

Brigham Young 77, South Dakota 59

South Dakota (2-6)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    27   2-5   2-4   6  11   2  2   6
C. Harrington     PF   26   1-3   2-2   0   8   0  2   4
Jessica Bing      SF   29   1-4   1-2   1   2   4  1   3
Catalina Stewart  SG   26  4-11   1-2   1   2   0  3  12
Abagail Merkle    PG   26  5-13   3-3   0   1   2  3  13
Maliah Lewellen   PF   16   1-2   2-2   0   0   0  1   4
Bella Grier       PF   14   4-6   4-6   0   2   0  2  13
Ashley Brown      C    12   0-3   0-0   1   6   1  1   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    8   1-2   0-0   0   1   1  1   3
Jillian Ho        PG   14   0-4   1-2   2   3   1  3   1
Adalyn Matz       SF    2   0-1   0-0   0   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 13 (A.Choe 2, J.Bing 2, C.Stewart 3, 
A.Merkle 1, M.Lewellen 1, A.Brown 1, J.Ho 2, A.Matz 1)
Blocked Shots: 2 (C.Stewart 1, A.Merkle 1)
Steals: 3 (J.Bing 1, A.Merkle 1, M.Lewellen 1)
3P FGs: 5-12 (C.Stewart 3-7, B.Grier 1-1, A.Brown 0-1, 
A.Bure 1-1, J.Ho 0-1, A.Matz 0-1)

Brigham Young (6-4)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Kassandra Woods   C    26   1-2   1-2   1   4   3  2   3
Finley Williams   PF   27   4-6   8-8   2   9   2  2  19
Jenny Plummer     SF   25   6-8   0-0   0   1   3  3  13
Alaysia Seaver    SG   32  4-23   2-3   2   8   4  0  13
Abigail Moreland  PG   28   3-8   0-0   0   3   4  3   9
Helen Bruno       PG   15   3-4   0-2   1   2   0  2   8
Destiny Holcombe  SF   19   1-1   2-2   1   4   0  3   4
Emely Delaney     SG    6   1-1   2-2   2   3   0  0   4
Nancy Kurtz       PF   11   1-1   0-1   1   4   1  3   2
Ella Benoit       C     8   0-0   0-0   0   2   0  2   0
Caitlyn Sikes     SF    3   1-2   0-0   0   0   1  0   2

Turnovers: 11 (K.Woods 3, F.Williams 2, A.Seaver 3, 
H.Bruno 2, N.Kurtz 1)
Blocked Shots: 1 (D.Holcombe 1)
Steals: 4 (J.Plummer 1, A.Moreland 1, H.Bruno 1, 
C.Sikes 1)
3P FGs: 12-28 (F.Williams 3-5, J.Plummer 1-2, A.Seaver 
3-10, A.Moreland 3-8, H.Bruno 2-3)

Player of Game: PF Finley Williams (BYU)

I don't think anything killed us more than our inability to deal with BYU's man to man. Without the height, they had to make up for it somewhere and it was in defense. We hung in there for most of the first half but after leading 37-31 they finished the first half with a 12-3 flourish and we were never back in it. They led 49-34 at halftime and had a double-digit lead for the rest of the way.

We were just outshot (44.6 percent to 35.2 percent). Angelina Choe was back in the saddle with 11 rebounds. Stewart, Merkle and Grier all scored in double digits and Stewart was 3-for-7 from 3-point range. (But Merkle only had one rebound.)

However, we were able to hold back Seaver. She only scored 13 points on 4-for-23 shooting. She took over forty percent of their shots.

The team would get a week off before their next game against UCLA. Four games at the end of December, and three of those against nationally ranked teams. Our team might not play well, but the point of this is not to win - it's to get better and to not give up during adversity. Of course, if we managed to beat UCLA, Duke, Maryland or Connecticut....

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTE

Ugh. What a tough run of games. The Montana State and Hampton games were particularly tough for different reasons.

Time to hold our noses and finish the run. Four more games in December, and then conference play begins.

Remianen · January 21, 2012

First, let me say that I've enjoyed reading this diary from beginning to end. Very entertaining.

Secondly, fire EVERYONE. Tomlinson's right. Look at how much Claire leaned on her assistants. Notice how many successful head coaches got their start on HER bench? She was like the cradle of championship pedigree.

Thirdly, an old coach of mine (who loved him some Vince Lombardi) used to tell us, "moral victories are a loser's consolation". I think you should find out which girls truly have fire in their bellies and let those girls play. In fact, that should be your #1 recruiting criteria. You can't teach passion, you can't teach fire, and you sure as hell can't teach heart. In your position, you've got no shot at the blue chip recruits who put up quintuple doubles night after night. But you can get the decent to good players who refuse to lose.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that Zoe McHale is going to burn out and fade away.

Petrel · January 23, 2012

First, let me say that I've enjoyed reading this diary from beginning to end. Very entertaining.

Secondly, fire EVERYONE. Tomlinson's right. Look at how much Claire leaned on her assistants. Notice how many successful head coaches got their start on HER bench? She was like the cradle of championship pedigree.

Yeah. Undoubtedly someone's going to get fired. If I don't get Gray then Caitlyn Williams might go. If I don't get Crumley then she's history. Ulmer and Reavis might go with her too, but the question the AD will ask is "why did you fire every single one of your assistants?" I don't know if that's every happened in the men's game.

Thirdly, an old coach of mine (who loved him some Vince Lombardi) used to tell us, "moral victories are a loser's consolation". I think you should find out which girls truly have fire in their bellies and let those girls play. In fact, that should be your #1 recruiting criteria. You can't teach passion, you can't teach fire, and you sure as hell can't teach heart. In your position, you've got no shot at the blue chip recruits who put up quintuple doubles night after night. But you can get the decent to good players who refuse to lose.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that Zoe McHale is going to burn out and fade away.

Florida A&M - McHale's team - is 0-9 for the season. One of only three NCAA Division I schools without a win. Makes me glad.

It might have been that the blue-chip list was doomed to failure. I will have to figure out how to evaluate players for hustle - highly evaluated players that might not have great high school status but a ton of potential.

Petrel · January 23, 2012

December 2012

On Sunday the 16th, Caitlyn Williams and I went back to see Isabella Crumley. We had two lists of players - blue chip players and role players - in mind at the beginning of the season. Crumley was the role player we settled on. She had been offered a scholarship by USD and the only team listed on her ESPN Rise profile was South Dakota, so she clearly was interested. Furthermore, it looked like we had not "primed the pump" for some other team - unless Crumley was not telling us something.

The last time we visited her in Southwest Detroit, it was a very awkward situation. Her parents were bumps on logs. The formerly talkative Crumley - at least she was according to Williams - had suddenly clammed up and was as nervous as a frog on a burning log.

So this time, we decided to make things a bit more casual. I spent $20 of my own money (an NCAA violation by the way) and I ordered pizza for the family. The parents were nervous at first, but after some pizza they finally seemed to loosen up. Mr. Crumley talked about moving out of Southwest Detroit. "There's not a lot wrong with Detroit that can't be fixed, if someone would just give a damn. But the city's just got too bad." He wasn't making much money as a lawyer, either. "I wanted to stay local, but after Isabella goes to college, we might move. Though it would be hard to leave Stewart behind."

Stewart was Isabella's younger brother who died at the age of five. (You couldn't escape his picture from anywhere in the house, and I mean that almost literally. Even in the bathroom he was looking at you.) He died of meningitis from some ailment. "He just got sick one day," Mrs. Crumley said. "Then he started crying because of a headache, and then he kept throwing up. We took him to the emergency room...but he didn't make it. I don't like to talk about it."

"Isabella was real close to Stewart," Mr. Crumley said. "I think that she feels the same way we do," he said. "You know, not wanting to leave home."

I noticed it with Isabella. A faint hint of a nod. Wow, how do you talk someone out of that? I wasn't any kind of psychologist; I couldn't imagine that Isabella would still need a counselor. The boy had been dead for almost five years now.

"When I go out of the court," she said, "I kiss my hand and that's five fingers on the hand for Stewart, who died when he was five. Then I wave at Stewart because he's in Heaven, looking down on me. So I have to go all out because I don't want him thinking that I'm slacking off."

"So that's why you wear #5?" I asked, remembering her number vaguely from some film.

"Yeah. And I notice that you don't have no #5 on the Coyotes." She pronounced it KI-yotes.

There would hopefully be time for pronunciation lessons later. "Trust me - we'll save it for you. If you come. Are you still interested in coming on campus at the end of the month?"

"Yeah!" she said.

"Good," I smiled. "See you on the 30th. Dress warm."

(* * *)

The visit was only an hour and thirty minutes. But I felt the ice had been broken.

"Hey, Mark," Caitlyn said.

"Yeah?"

"You know that pizza was an NCAA violation."

"Okay," I said. "Are you going to report me to Compliance?"

"No."

"Good. I'll buy you something to eat at the airport, then."

(* * *)

December 20, 2012 - South Dakota (2-6) at #22 UCLA (6-1)

It had been about a zillion years since I had been to the Pauley Pavilion, the famous arena where John Wooden's UCLA Bruins had won so many championships. When I was a junior I had played (once) on the court and now I'd be returning to it as a coach.

If you look up at the ceiling, you'll see 11 championship banners. Ten are for men's basketball and one is for women's basketball (UCLA's AIAW win back in 1978, four years before the NCAA began offering a championship for women.) There are other banners for volleyball and gymnastics, but the rule is that only national championship banners can hang here.

This is the part of The Gauntlet where you learn how much difference of talent there is between the UCLAs of the world and the South Dakotas. The Bruins had two first-round WNBA Draft picks on their team. Junior SG Addison Brooks is averaging 27 points a game - that's not a typo, she's leading the NCAA in scoring this season. Add her 6.4 rebounds per game and she's a multiple threat. She's hitting about 89 percent of her free throws too, so you can't hack her in an attempt to slow her down.

Defensively, she's rock solid. She averages 2.3 steals per game, good for 7th nationwide. Sophomore center Brinley Shackleford has 8.1 ppg, 4.6 rpg and at 6-8 she has 2.6 blocks per game, good for 8th in the country.

UCLA's 79.3 ppg is good for 10th nationally, their 17.3 assists per game are good for 17th, they are 6th in steals with 8.7 team steals per game. The Yotes are 163rd in points per game, 101st in assists per game, and 324th in steals per game. I'm wondering if we can bring 30 players onto the court, just for backup.

Allison Riggle - she of the broken foot - is day to day. The swelling has gone down and she states that she's not feeling any pain. Whether she plays or not will be a game day decision.

UCLA 71, South Dakota 47

South Dakota (2-7)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    27   4-7   0-1   3  11   2  1   8
C. Harrington     PF   25   3-5   1-4   1   8   1  2   7
Jessica Bing      SF   26  2-10   6-6   1   2   1  3  10
Catalina Stewart  SG   28   1-4   0-0   1   3   0  1   2
Abagail Merkle    PG   24   3-4   0-0   1   4   0  0   6
Allison Riggle    PG   20   2-4   1-2   0   1   1  2   5
Maliah Lewellen   PF   17   1-3   0-0   0   1   0  2   3
Bella Grier       SF   15   0-1   0-1   0   2   0  2   0
Ashley Brown      C    11   1-1   0-0   1   3   1  1   2
Anzhelika Bure    SG    4   1-1   0-0   0   1   0  1   2
Adalyn Matz       SF    2   1-2   0-0   0   0   0  0   2
Leah Alexander    PF    2   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 22 (A.Choe 5, C.Harrington 2, J.Bing 6, 
C.Stewart 3, A.Merkle 2, A.Riggle 1, M.Lewellen 2, 
B.Grier 1)
Blocked Shots: 5 (C.Stewart 1, A.Merkle 2, M.Lewellen 2)
Steals: 2 (M.Lewellen 1, A.Matz 1)
3P FGs: 1-6 (C.Harrington 0-1, C.Stewart 0-1, A.Riggle 
0-2, M.Lewellen 1-2)

#16 UCLA (7-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
B. Shackelford    C    31  5-11   2-6   1   6   1  3  12
Ximena Pardo      PF   33   5-6   3-6   4   7   2  2  15
Mya Ketcham       SF   30  4-10   3-4   1   3   2  3  14
Addison Brooks    SG    2   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Kaylee Caceres    SG   28  1-11   2-2   1   2   2  4   4
Gracie Wiley      PG   31  6-14   1-1   3   6   3  5  16
Ava Meyer         SG   19   3-9   0-0   1   5   1  0   7
Ayana Alexis      SG    3   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  0   0
Amelia Pipes      PG    7   0-0   1-2   0   0   2  0   1
Jordan Turner     C    12   1-2   0-0   3   3   0  0   2
Ava Lower         PF    4   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  1   0
Hailey Wexler     PF    1   0-0   0-0   1   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 5 (K.Caceres 1, A.Meyer 1, A.Alexis 1, 
A.Pipes 1, J.Turner 1)
Blocked Shots: 5 (B.Shackelford 4, X.Pardo 1)
Steals: 7 (X.Pardo 3, M.Ketcham 1, K.Caceres 1, A.Meyer 
1, J.Turner 1)
3P FGs: 9-32 (X.Pardo 2-3, M.Ketcham 3-7, K.Caceres 
0-7, G.Wiley 3-9, A.Meyer 1-6)

Player of Game: C Ximena Pardo (UCLA)

You might think that we did pretty well against the Bruins, all things considered. Nine seconds after the opening tip when PF Ximena Pardo raced down to the top of the key and opened the game up with a 3-pointer and I thought "okay, this is going to be a slaughter."

But a couple of minutes into the game, Addison Brooks complained of wrist pain. Figuring they wouldn't need her, they sat her down for the rest of the game and that gave us a chance. The Bruins started out 7-0, but we hung in there and with four minutes left in the first we were only down 23-21. But UCLA called a time out and finished the half 9-0 to lead 32-21 at the break.

Seven seconds into the second half they got a steal. We managed to stay around 10-12 points away for the first part of the second half but too much talent made the difference and they upped their lead throughout the game. Part of the problem was that we turned the ball over 22 times! Jessica Bing had six turnovers and Angelina Choe had five! Bing had more turnovers (6) than the entire UCLA team did (5)!

UCLA hit 9-3 pointers, and we were just 1-for-6 behind the arc. Angelina Choe had eight points and 11 rebounds for us - she is a fighter.

Allison Riggle came back for us! I put her in after about 10 minutes and she played for about 20. She had five points and one assist. She complained of a sore foot after the game, but she didn't claim to have any pain. So Allison is going to be day-to-day for us.

(* * *)

On December 21, 2012, we were all on a plan from Los Angeles to Washington for the South Dakota/Maryland game. The Terrapins hadn't played in 10 days; we'd be playing with very little rest.

Today was also supposed to be the end date of the Long Count on the Mayan Calendar. Lots of things had been promised for December 21, 2012. There was all kinds of weird crap about "magnetic reversals".

Normally, flying to games is no fun. This isn't men's basketball. You fly coach. You reserve a lot of seats. Seniors get the seats in front near the bulkhead because they have more leg room. Everyone is staring at your team - not in the least because all of them are wearing USD warmups.

However, it was a different flight. There was a lot of scare mongering from nuts about how you'd better not be near a plane during this Milky Way Galactic Shift or whatever. We joked about how we'd be in no danger because aliens would come. Or we'd be Raptured, or something.

We made it to the ground utterly without incident. December 21, 2012 came and went just like any other news day. All of those hoping fervently for (or against) a Mayan Apocalypse were sorely disappointed. There was no grand outpouring of universal consciousness either, just the shops at the Reagan Airport. The Doomsayers adjusted their Death Clocks, and life went on.

(* * *)

December 22, 2012 - South Dakota (2-7) at #2 Maryland (10-0)

The #2 ranked Terrapins were the highest ranked team that South Dakota had ever faced. They had won their games by an average of 23.8 points per game this year. Some said it was the best Maryland team since the 2006 National Championship team.

One of the keys to that team was a girl called Anika Green (uh-NEE-ka), a 6-6 sophomore power forward who was having a better year than last year despite playing fewer minutes. She was hitting 63 percent of her shots - virtually all from point-blank range - but her strength was on the boards. She was #14 in the country in rebounding with 9.9 rebounds per game. Green would probably be a first round Top Five WNBA Draft pick in 2015.

Three players on the Terps averaged in the double digits, led by senior shooting guard Elisabeth Desreaulx, a Quebecer transplanted to Alberta. The French Connection averaged 14.1 points a game and wasn't even good enough to start the previous year. Our goal would be stopping these two highly-touted players, or at least to slow them down. But aside from their 18.2 personal fouls a game, this appeared to be a team with few weaknesses.

Maryland 82, South Dakota 68

South Dakota (2-8)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    26   2-5   0-0   1   6   0  3   4
C. Harrington     PF   18   1-6   0-0   1   2   0  2   3
Jessica Bing      SF   27   4-4   0-0   1   1   4  2   8
Catalina Stewart  SG   29  6-13   0-0   2   3   5  3  16
Abagail Merkle    PG   24   6-8   0-0   0   5   5  1  12
Allison Riggle    PG   19   4-8   0-0   0   1   3  0   9
Maliah Lewellen   PF   18   1-2   0-0   1   2   0  0   3
Bella Grier       PF   16   3-3   0-0   1   1   1  1   6
Ashley Brown      C    10   1-2   0-0   1   2   1  0   2
Anzhelika Bure    SG    8   0-3   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Adalyn Matz       SF    4   2-2   0-0   0   1   1  0   5

Turnovers: 15 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 2, J.Bing 4, 
C.Stewart 3, A.Riggle 2, M.Lewellen 1, A.Brown 1)
Blocked Shots: 1 (A.Merkle 1)
Steals: 4 (C.Stewart 1, A.Merkle 2, B.Grier 1)
3P FGs: 8-19 (C.Harrington 1-2, C.Stewart 4-7, A.Merkle 
0-1, A.Riggle 1-4, M.Lewellen 1-1, A.Bure 0-3, A.Matz 
1-1)

#2 Maryland (11-0)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Anika Green       C    31   4-5   1-2   3   3   1  0   9
Laylah Barns      PF   24   5-5   2-4   2   5   1  1  12
Ella Godoy        SF   22   5-9   0-0   0   2   1  4  12
É. Desreaulx      PG   30  5-13   0-0   3   5   3  3  15
Sarah Lively      PG   12   1-1   2-2   0   1   1  4   4
B. Carpenter      SF   25  4-10   1-4   1   4   3  0  12
Aubrie Woodard    SG   17   1-4   0-0   1   4   5  0   2
Paulina Ives      PF   15   1-1   0-0   2   4   2  0   2
Evelyn Zhang      SF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Mollie Shields    PG   12   2-4   0-0   0   2   3  0   6
Mollie Phan       C    10   4-4   0-0   1   1   0  0   8
Chiara Kautzmann  PF    2   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 14 (E.Godoy 1, É.Desreaulx 5, S.Lively 1, 
B.Carpenter 3, A.Woodard 1, P.Ives 1, E.Zhang 1, 
M.Shields 1)
Blocked Shots: 2 (A.Green 2)
Steals: 8 (A.Green 1, E.Godoy 1, É.Desreaulx 1, 
B.Carpenter 3, M.Phan 1, C.Kautzmann 1)
3P FGs: 12-31 (E.Godoy 2-4, É.Desreaulx 5-13, 
B.Carpenter 3-7, A.Woodard 0-3, M.Shields 2-3, 
C.Kautzmann 0-1)

Player of Game: PF Laylah Barns (MD)

This was a really great game for us. It looks like my players are finally starting to get used to each other. Allison Riggle came in and gave us good minutes despite her injury. Man, there were times out there when you wouldn't think this team had lost six straight games. They looked like Yotes out there for the first time this season.

Both teams were bold. We shot 53.6 percent. Maryland was bolder. They shot 56.1 percent.

We hit eight 3-pointers. (Catalina Stewart went 4-for-7). The Terps hit 12 out of 21 shots. They just had a hell of a lot and showed us what hard work was all about.

We were never ahead, though. We were down 40-29 at the half. They have monsters that can play a smothering man-to-man. But they only led by 20 points one time, late in the fourth quarter, and only for about a minute.

The referees let us play. There were only 12 free throws take in that game - all by Maryland. The Terps went 6-for-12 and we went...0-for-0. We might have gotten within less than 10 points if we could have gone to the damned line. But for the most part, the officiating was good.

If we can keep playing like that, we might indeed meet Willie Burbank's benchmark. An 8-8 Summit League season is exactly what we need.

(* * *)

It was the Christmas season. We had just come out of a major cold snap that dumped six inches of snow in western South Dakota. But the eastern part of the state had been relatively untouched, save for the arctic winds that blew from west to east and turned the given temperature (4 degrees) into a lie whenever one of those -20 below knives would cut into you whenever you weren't looking.

While the west of the state was having it rough - twelve people were found trapped in a bus, a story which made the news all across the state - the temperature in Eastern South Dakota was climbing. By Christmas it was at 32 and by the day after Christmas we had hit 40 degrees.

"This is short sleeve weather!" Willie Burbank - a man who had experienced many a South Dakota winter - had told me.

The players on the team who lived in South Dakota went back to visit their families - whenever the roads were cleared enough to do so. As for the non-native South Dakotans, we went to visit the Sioux Falls YMCA on Christmas Day with members of the South Dakota men's team in an effort to provide a good Christmas to members of the South Dakota community that might have a hard time making ends meet. Gerald Acevedo, the coach of the men's team, was having the same kind of luck I was.

"How's it going?" I said.

"Lousy, Mark. You can't recruit to South Dakota worth shit." He was talking about himself. "Every time a snowflake falls and hits the Weather Channel, one of my recruits commits to Florida. Say, did you hear the news about Nathaniel McCaskill?"

"What news?"

"He's gone. He took a job up somewhere in Texas."

"So that was it. He had brought the Yotes football team into the FCS Top 25 for a second year in the row. But with other FCS schools able to offer championships - and the Yotes unable to - it made it very hard for him to recruit."

"Damn."

"The NCAA is thinking of revoking that rule about scholarships. It's got a lot of the ADs in a stink."

I didn't see it happening. The NCAA had already affirmed the idea in a meeting, but in order to placate the naysayers, proposals for admininstering these changes had gone to a "student-athlete well-being working group," a boondoggle if there ever was one.

But clearly, the new rules were affecting how some schools were recruiting. I had to wonder how much of a scholarship MTSU was able to offer Sofia Owens. Hell, she might be spending that extra money right now.

(* * *)

During that same weekend, Caitlyn Williams headed out to see Aaliyah Gray. Gray was the student from Wray High School out in Colorado who was still on our "blue chipper" list. She was on one of the Colorado All-State teams and a must-get. However, we didn't have the kind of money where both of us could go and recruit her, so Cailtyn went. I had spent enough time away from the team as it was.

Of course, we interrogated her when she got back. On a scale of 1 to 10, Williams rated her visit a "3". "Aaliyah's family doesn't seem to know much about South Dakota, and they're a little hesitant about her being that far from home." Aaliyah Gray didn't seem to know that much about USD but Williams described Gray as "interested, or at least pleasant."

I consider 3 a "foot in the door". We hadn't been thrown out the door, or told to go away. The Grays, however, thought highly enough of us to have USD come in and show them what we had to offer. The next step in recruiting, of course, would be a personal visit. But I was already behind.

December 27, 2012 - South Dakota (2-8) at #3 Duke (11-0)

You can't say that USD is scared of anyone. We're taking on two Top Five teams back to back. Of the five top teams in women's basketball right now according to the WCBA Poll, three are in the ACC: #2 Florida State, #3 Duke and #4 Maryland who fell two spots despite beating us. There are only seven undefeated teams in women's basketball, which would have been unthinkable five years ago.

Duke is #13 in the country in scoring with 77.6 ppg. Their margin of victory is +24.3 points, which is #7 in the country. They were very strong on the boards, averaging 27.0 defensive rpg to lead the nation. If you missed your shot, they made you pay for it. They lead the country in blocked shots per game, with 7.4 blocks and were 6th in the country with steals with 9.4 per game.

But they played smart, too. Their 14.4 personal fouls per game were third lowest in the country. They had a great point guard in Brooklyn Hamilton, who averaged 4.2 assists to 2.5 turnovers per game. Aside from Brooklyn Hamilton and senior center Kali Campbell, it wasn't like they had one marquee player leading the squad. It was a team effort. They were the defending ACC Champs both in the regular season and in the tournament, and this team was a great testament as to why. Add to that that we'd be playing in Cameron Indoor Stadium and raise the level of difficulty.

Duke 83, South Dakota 54

South Dakota (2-9)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    24   1-3   0-0   0   4   0  3   2
C. Harrington     PF   20   2-4   2-2   0   1   0  2   6
Jessica Bing      SF   26   1-7   0-0   0   1   3  1   3
Catalina Stewart  SG   25  8-11   1-1   0   3   2  4  17
Abagail Merkle    PG   19   3-7   0-0   0   3   1  2   6
Allison Riggle    PG   27  5-10   2-4   2   2   8  1  12
Maliah Lewellen   C    17   0-0   0-0   0   2   0  4   0
Bella Grier       PF   15   1-3   0-0   1   3   1  2   2
Ashley Brown      PF   14   0-0   0-0   0   1   1  2   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    7   2-4   0-0   0   1   1  0   6
Adalyn Matz       SF    3   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Leah Alexander    PF    2   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 18 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 4, 
C.Stewart 3, A.Merkle 3, A.Riggle 2, B.Grier 1, A.Bure 
2)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 1 (A.Merkle 1)
3P FGs: 3-11 (C.Harrington 0-1, J.Bing 1-1, C.Stewart 
0-1, A.Riggle 0-4, B.Grier 0-1, A.Bure 2-3)

#3 Duke (12-0)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Kali Campbell     C    29  9-15  4-12   3  10   2  1  22
Addison Dial      PF   27   3-4   2-4   1   4   4  2   8
Alyssa Moore      SF   28   2-4   0-0   1   3   0  3   5
Emely Oakley      SG   27   2-9   0-0   2   4   4  2   4
Brooklyn Hamilton PG   29   5-7   0-0   1   3   6  1  12
Aracely Leger     SG   23   8-9   4-4   1   7   7  1  24
Sophia Haines     SG    8   0-0   0-0   0   0   2  0   0
Mercedes Bullard  SF    5   1-2   2-2   1   1   0  0   5
Ava Patterson     C    11   0-1   0-0   0   2   1  4   0
Isabella Towne    PF    9   1-1   0-2   1   1   0  1   2
Olivia Vance      PF    2   0-0   1-2   0   0   0  0   1
Sophia Eatmon     C     1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 14 (K.Campbell 1, A.Moore 2, E.Oakley 4, 
B.Hamilton 1, A.Leger 3, S.Haines 1, A.Patterson 2)
Blocked Shots: 3 (K.Campbell 2, A.Moore 1)
Steals: 7 (K.Campbell 1, A.Moore 1, E.Oakley 1, 
B.Hamilton 2, A.Leger 2)
3P FGs: 8-15 (A.Moore 1-1, E.Oakley 0-4, B.Hamilton 
2-3, A.Leger 4-5, M.Bullard 1-2)

Player of Game: PG Aracely Leger (DUKE)

That game looks a lot closer than it really was. They had us whipped from the opening tipoff. After eight minutes, they led 21-4 and never looked back. They led 53-30 at halftime and basically coasted through the second half.

Part of the problem was that we just couldn't defend a team full of blue-chip quickness. They made 59.6 percent of their field goal attempts. They waxed us on the board 35-21. They had 26 assists to our 17. We only had one steal compared to seven. I believe they beat us in every single element of the box score. We didn't belong on the court with them. (But someday, that will change.)

Any positives? Catalina Stewart shone with 17 points on 8-for-11 shooting. Allison Riggle - now fully off the disabled list - had 12 points and eight assists for the Coyotes. But Jessica Bing went 1-for-7 with eight turnovers.

We had one game the following day - going up to Connecticut and Nathan Padilla, the King Coach of women's college basketball. Storrs was the home of champions. Last year, we went to Tennessee and this year, it would be UConn's turn.

(* * *)

December 29, 2012 - South Dakota (2-9) at Connecticut (6-1)

Of course, UConn wouldn't be coming to us. We'd have to go to the Gampel Pavilion to play them, hope of many championship teams for both men's and women's basketball.

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/3106/gampelpavillion.jpg

Now, if you know anything about Nathan Padilla and Connecticut women's basketball, you might ask, "what are they ranked?" But the odd thing was that Connecticut wasn't nationally ranked at all! At least, not in the WBCA Poll!

The WBCA Poll - which was now the major poll you wanted to be ranked in since it had wait in the NCAA Tournament Selection process - didn't even have the Huskies in its Top 25!! (The AP and UPI polls did, however.) Defending champion Notre Dame was ranked #13. Louisville was ranked #19 and Syracuse had a #25 ranking. But there was no love for Connecticut.

"I never paid a lot of attention about being #1 when we were #1. We've been at a certain level for so long that we take polls for exactly what they're worth."

Even so, the Huskies hasn't filled themselves with glory in the non-conference part of their schedule. Padilla had avoided the big-name teams he was used to playing every year like Stanford or Baylor - did he know something we didn't? people asked themselves - and instead put his money in the Preseason WNIT Where UConn was ranked #1. They thumped Tennessee State 81-48 and found themselves facing East Tennessee State - where they lost, 70-62.

The loss kept them out of high-marquee games like Bowling Green, or UCLA, or Ohio State. The Preseason WNIT Was single-elimination with no consolation games. The other teams on UConn's schedule were powerhouses like...Penn, St. Francis-NY and Binghampton. The East Tennessee State game was the only game UConn lost...but it was the only team UConn had played that had a record above .500. The WBCA poll recognized Connecticut's cupcake schedule for what it was and refused to play along.

The Hartford Courant wrote, "Nathan Padilla was never afraid to play the toughest teams in women's basketball - but in 2012-13 he seems happy with the Browns and the NJITs of the world. What's going on at Connecticut?" But Padilla remained closed-lipped.

There wasn't going to be much hospitality at Storrs. There would be no tour of the locker room like the one Claire Kelley gave us. Even though South Dakota wasn't the caliber of team Connecticut traditionally played, that didn't mean that the Huskies weren't out to win.

Connecticut was still #14 in the country in points per game (77.2) and they were second in victory margin (+27.4). They led the country in offensive rebounds per game (16.7) and were third overall in Total Rebounds (41.7). Their 9.4 steals per game also led the country, and the Huskies turned the ball over fewer times than any team in the country (8.4 TO/game).

This would be senior PF Abigail Ruano's last year. She led the Huskies with 15.4 ppg. Junior PF Ashley Wicklund averaged a double-double per game so far this season (10.4 ppg/11.0 rpg), and she was fifth in the country in rebounding. But last year's second-team SG Mia Schaller had taken her 17.6 ppg with her to the WNBA and the San Antonio Silver Stars.

Connecticut 83, South Dakota 49

South Dakota (2-10)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    24   0-3   0-0   0   8   2  1   0
C. Harrington     PF   18   3-6   1-2   0   4   0  3   8
Jessica Bing      SF   24   2-5   1-2   1   1   1  3   5
Catalina Stewart  SG   28   3-4   1-2   0   1   2  2   7
Abagail Merkle    PG   23   1-3   2-2   0   4   1  1   4
Allison Riggle    PG   27   2-5   6-6   0   4   4  1  11
Maliah Lewellen   PF   19   3-5   0-1   0   2   0  3   7
Bella Grier       PF   15   3-5   1-2   0   0   0  1   7
Ashley Brown      C    11   0-0   0-0   1   2   0  2   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    7   0-1   0-0   0   1   0  1   0
Adalyn Matz       SF    3   0-3   0-1   1   1   0  0   0
Leah Alexander    PF    1   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 21 (A.Choe 3, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 2, 
C.Stewart 5, A.Merkle 2, A.Riggle 4, M.Lewellen 2, 
B.Grier 2)
Blocked Shots: 3 (A.Merkle 2, A.Riggle 1)
Steals: 0 
3P FGs: 3-11 (C.Harrington 1-1, C.Stewart 0-1, A.Riggle 
1-3, M.Lewellen 1-3, B.Grier 0-1, A.Bure 0-1, A.Matz 
0-1)

Connecticut (7-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Nora Yuan         C    24   0-3   2-4   2   7   2  0   2
Ashley Wicklund   PF   17   3-5   2-4   2   3   3  4   8
Abigail Ruano     SF   22   6-9   3-5   5   9   1  3  17
Samantha Beattie  SG   27   2-7   3-3   3   6   1  2   7
Jayla Rodrigue    PG   25  5-13   0-0   0   1   3  1  12
Azul Floyd        SF   21   3-6   0-0   2   4   1  3   7
Kinsley Futrell   PG   18  8-14   1-1   1   3   2  2  24
Aliana Brown      SG   11   1-3   0-0   0   1   1  1   3
Janelle Greenway  SF    2   0-3   0-0   1   1   0  0   0
Amiah Murray      PF   20   1-3   0-0   0   4   0  2   2
Sasha Williams    PF   10   0-0   1-2   0   2   0  1   1
America Cofer     PF    1   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 6 (N.Yuan 1, A.Ruano 1, S.Beattie 1, A.Floyd 
1, A.Murray 1, S.Williams 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 11 (N.Yuan 3, S.Beattie 1, J.Rodrigue 5, 
A.Murray 1, S.Williams 1)
3P FGs: 13-31 (N.Yuan 0-2, A.Ruano 2-2, S.Beattie 0-4, 
J.Rodrigue 2-3, A.Floyd 1-2, K.Futrell 7-13, A.Brown 
1-2, J.Greenway 0-2, A.Murray 0-1)

Player of Game: PG Kinsley Futrell (UCONN)

Our 34 point loss to UConn matched our worst performance of the year against Montana State. Can you believe that we actually led Connecticut with 7:12 left in the first, 22-18? Unfortunately, we were leading because we could pick holes in their 2-1-2 zone defense and when the Huskies flipped over to a simple man-to-man, Connecticut began to move forward. That put them in the driver's seat and ones they started breathing down our necks they found the answer to just about everything we could do.

The first half score wsa 46-34. Not bad. But the second half was 37-15. They hit 13 3-pointers in the game, outrebounded us 41-29. But the big key of the game was turnovers. When you're -15 in turnover differential you're going to have a very hard time winning. We only got off 40 shots for the entire game, namely because we didn't have the ball. And we couldn't force a turnover against a team like Connecticut.

After the game, I emphasized that we had to be much more aggressive on man-to-man. That we had to be more comfortable in shooting out of a set when faster teams took us on. #42 (Kinsey Furtrell) just lit us up out there. She sank seven 3-pointers against us and could kill even the tiniest swing in momentum. The back up point guard, Jayla Rodrigue, had five steals.

The only consolation I had was that we played them hard for 13 minutes, and then they figured us out. We're about 25 percent of a team like UConn.

But The Gauntlet was done for 2012-13. The new players had hung in there, and at times were even surprising. Aside from a game against Sam Houston State in January, the non-conference part of the season was over. From here on out, it would be a march to the Summit League championship.

(* * *)

In 2013, the Women's Basketball Coaches Association came out on December 31, 2012 - the same as it does every Monday.

   #  Team                      FPV  Record  Points  Prv
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1.  Baylor                   (72)    13-0    1800    1
  2.  Duke                             12-0    1727    3
  3.  Maryland                         13-0    1657    4
  4.  Florida State                    11-0    1584    2
  5.  Purdue                           12-0    1512    7
  6.  Iowa                             11-1    1428    6
  7.  California                       12-0    1355    5
  8.  Ohio State                       11-1    1316    8
  9.  Notre Dame                       10-1    1229   13
 10.  Stanford                          9-1    1152   10

(Connecticut's win against USD did not propel them forward.)

But a brand new poll - the "Mid-Major Poll" - was released for the very first time. It sort of threw a bone to the teams that did not come from "Automatic Qualifier Conferences" in BCS-speak.

   #  Team                        FPV  Record  Points  Prv
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1.  Illinois State             (72)    11-1    1800   NR
  2.  UNC Wilmington                     11-0    1725   NR
  3.  Fresno State                       12-1    1659   NR
  4.  Bowling Green                      10-1    1576   NR
  5.  East Tennessee State               13-2    1520   NR
  6.  Arkansas-Little Rock               10-1    1440   NR
  7.  Gonzaga                            11-1    1368   NR
  8.  UTEP                                9-1    1296   NR
  9.  Temple                              8-3    1224   NR
 10.  Harvard                            10-1    1150   NR

We weren't in either poll. Oakland was #14 in the mid-majors poll. Western Illinois picked up a handful of votes, but surprisingly South Dakota State was overlooked.

At this point, we were busy with other things. Isabella Crumley was now on-campus and would be there between December 30th and January 1st. (We'd hold a New Year's Eve party at the DakotaDome - this was one of the problems of being a single man who lived in an apartment, namely, there was no place to hold fetes.) Granted, the campus would be pretty empty by this point due to Winter Break, but the players were definitely there and we were treating her like our honored guest.

The weather on the 29th was a bit nasty, with another one of those snowless, arctic-level wind chills. But by Crumley's visit, the weather was temperate for South Dakota - hovering around the 30-32 degree mark. There would be no danger of Isabella being snowed in and being tempted to forego Vermillion.

I asked Choe what she thought of Crumley. "She's tall, and she can block shots. But coach, I don't think she's really that good. I think she's going to ride the bench if she signs." Choe, as a senior, had the least to lose with being honest.

The goal was to bring Crumley out of her shell. Who do you room her with? Catalina Stewart or Adalyn Matz, both of whom are white and might make her feel out of place in a predominantly white state? Leah Alexander, the gregarious New Yorker who is riding the bench? Abagail Merkle, our religious JUCO? There was no perfect fit.

We went with Stewart. Stewart had a problem with shyness coming to USD but was now starting to mesh with her teammates. Furthermore, Stewart was the leading scorer and she probably had the rosiest outlook on South Dakota. I asked her how the visit was going.

"I don't know. She doesn't seem that happy. I think she thought there were going to be more guys here."

"Well, God, Catalina, what did she expect coming here during Winter Break? She was the one who agreed to show up. These teams ain't co-ed you know."

At the New Year's Even party, I watched who she talked to. She spent most of her time hanging around Catalina, who looked like she had an anchor around her neck. As we celebrated the countdown to 2013, I wondered if I had made a big mistake and I wondered what surprises conference play would bring.

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

Yes, The Gauntlet is over. I'm having second thoughts about setting up another Gauntlet for a third straight year (if I make it to my third season with USD), but it does provide a brand new perspective on what's going on with the really good teams. It also helps me judge where I am among the top 343 teams or so. (My RPI is currently at 153.)

Up next: Summit League play finally begins, with UMKC, Western Illinois, North Dakota State and IUPUI on tap. And of course, more recruiting follies.

Petrel · January 25, 2012

January 2013

At the beginning of the year, Isabella Crumley finally headed back to Detroit. This wasn't the first time we had gotten nowhere with a recruit and it wouldn't be the last. Crumley could not seem to untie her apron strings; we didn't know if it was Mommy or Daddy that was holding them. I resolved that I would be making my final visit to the Crumleys; Caitlyn could hand all matters regarding recruiting her from this point on. I just didn't know where I was going to go from here.

However, regarding Aaliyah Gray, we got good news - Gray was going to visit the campus! We decided January 19th would be the perfect date for that - it was the day of the South Dakota/South Dakota State matchup. It was a great day to pick because it drew our biggest crowd of the year. Unfortunately, Gray couldn't make it work so we had to settle for January 26th, the game against IPFW.

Maybe this would all be over by the end of January, but I doubted it.

January 3, 2013 - UMKC (5-6) at South Dakota (2-10)

You might look at those five wins and think, "Wow, the Kangaroos have turned it around." Not so fast - Missouri-Kansas City's wins were against Drake (5-7), Tennessee-Martin (1-10), Illinois-Chicago (4-7), Oral Roberts (3-10 and having a down year in the Southland) and Southeast Missouri State (2-9).

Over our games - and our more difficult schedule - we hada a +1.6 edge in rebounding but were -0.8 in turnovers. Furthermore, the Roos had the best shooting percentage of any team in the Summit League this year - 45.8 percent. If you didn't contest their baskets they could walk all over you.

Junior PG Ava Batchelor had boosted her ppg average to 11.2 and now had a positive A/TO ratio - that's what a year of development will do to you. She had hit 35 of 38 free throws this year. Sophomore SF Abigail Kennedy had only started eight games the previous year, but had started every UMKC game this year, averaging 10.3 ppg and 4.5 rpg.

It looked like we could take on UMKC. But conference play was always a very different beast. I was just glad we were finally back to playing in the DakotaDome.

UMKC 77, South Dakota 54

UMKC (6-6, 1-0)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Madison Bright    C    26   4-9   1-2   0   7   1  2   9
Sophie Gerl       PF   29   4-4   3-3   1   4   0  1  11
Abigail Kennedy   SF   27  8-10   0-0   0   5   5  4  17
Charley Hughes    SG   32   2-4   1-2   0   3   3  0   5
Ava Batchelor     PG   36  7-12   5-6   1   5   6  2  20
Madison Daniels   C    19   2-3   0-0   1   3   2  1   4
Mia Garnett       SF   16   3-5   1-2   0   1   1  2   9
Madison Reichert  SF    9   0-1   0-1   0   0   2  4   0
Rosemary Reynolds SG    3   1-1   0-0   0   1   0  0   2
Ryann Hunt        PG    4   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 10 (M.Bright 2, A.Kennedy 2, C.Hughes 1, 
A.Batchelor 1, M.Daniels 1, M.Garnett 1, M.Reichert 2)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 4 (A.Kennedy 2, C.Hughes 1, M.Daniels 1)
3P FGs: 4-7 (A.Kennedy 1-3, A.Batchelor 1-2, M.Garnett 
2-2)

South Dakota (2-11, 0-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    29   3-8   1-1   3   5   2  2   7
C. Harrington     PF   29   1-7   2-3   3   6   0  2   4
Jessica Bing      SF   33   6-9   3-5   1   4   2  1  15
Catalina Stewart  SG   14   2-3   1-2   0   1   2  4   6
Abagail Merkle    SG   29  5-15   0-0   2   6   5  1  11
Allison Riggle    PG   27   2-5   1-2   1   2   4  2   5
Maliah Lewellen   C    18   1-4   2-2   0   1   1  2   4
Bella Grier       PF   10   0-1   2-2   0   1   0  1   2
Ashley Brown      C     6   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  2   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    4   0-2   0-0   0   1   0  1   0
Adalyn Matz       SF    1   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 10 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 3, J.Bing 2, 
A.Riggle 1, A.Bure 1, A.Matz 1)
Blocked Shots: 2 (A.Choe 1, M.Lewellen 1)
Steals: 2 (C.Stewart 1, A.Riggle 1)
3P FGs: 2-8 (J.Bing 0-1, C.Stewart 1-2, A.Merkle 1-2, 
A.Riggle 0-2, A.Bure 0-1)

Player of Game: PG Ava Batchelor (UMKC)

Most of my comments in the locker room after this game were unprintable - what you would see would be one gigantic block of black text.

Catalina Stewart: Four personal fouls. Looked clueless.

Abigail Merkle: 5-for-15 shooting. She was just chucking it up there.

Caroline Harrington: 1-for-7.

Bella Grier: Plays 10 minutes, takes one shot.

Team defense: NONEXISTENT. The Roos shot 63.3 percent from the field.

After the game I warned everyone - "DO NOT SHOWER". I did something that Claire Kelley once did. When the spectators cleared, I brought every single player back on to the court in their dirty uniforms.

"Now," I said, "you're going to play the second half that you didn't play tonight." And I counted every single damned possession. We stayed there for three hours. Disgusted, I sent them home in their uniforms. They would be responsible for washing their own unis. "I'm not going to waste the staff's time! They're hired to wash the uniforms of athletes!"

After that, I went right back to the apartment and I must have drank a half-case of beer until I passed out.

It's just so damned depressing. When you're a player, you can blame your losses on your teammates. When you're a coach, the buck stops with you. I was 10-33 as a coach, I was having no success with recruiting, and I was feeling completely lost. No help from my coaches. (I swore that someone would be losing their job before I knocked myself out.) The AD didn't really care what happened to us. I knew that I had to talk to Coach Tomlinson or I'd go crazy before the season was over.

January 5, 2013 - South Dakota (2-11, 0-1) at Western Illinois (2-11, 0-0)

After that disastrous January 3rd, I took the position that UMKC was behind us. It was not to be mentioned.

We were now on the road. The team seemed slightly upbeat because they were escaping a winter storm warning, with a cold front having settled over South Dakota and with the temperatures in the low 20s. Otherwise, the squad was listless in practice. Were they already starting to give up? They looked sort of punch-drunk. It could have been fatigue from the previous night. I tried to be patient with them.

Western Illinois was at the bottom of the Summit League in wins, just like we were. It was their fourth home game and the Fighting Leathernecks were 0-3 at Waste Management Court. (That was the actual name of the court.)

It had been a disastrous season for the Fighting Leathernecks just like ours. Their only wins were their season opener against Mount St. Mary's, and a win against 1-11 Tennessee-Martin (by one point). The previous year Western Illinois had only won three games.

They had two hurt players, with a pair of starters going out. But no player averaged more than 7.8 points per game and the team only scored 46.4 points on the average (they gave up 63.7 points per game.) Among Summit League teams they had the worst rebounding margin at -7.5 per game. They shot 39 percent as a team.

If we didn't beat this team - then...what?

South Dakota 54, Western Illinois 40

South Dakota (3-12, 1-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    26   1-4   0-0   5  13   2  3   2
C. Harrington     PF   28   3-7   3-3   4   6   2  2   9
Jessica Bing      SF   30   3-6   2-2   1   2   1  2   8
Catalina Stewart  SG   30   5-8   2-2   0   2   0  1  14
Abagail Merkle    PG   28   4-8   5-6   1   3   3  0  13
Allison Riggle    PG   16   0-2   0-0   0   1   1  2   0
Maliah Lewellen   C    18   1-2   0-0   1   1   0  1   2
Bella Grier       SF   12   1-2   0-0   1   2   0  3   2
Ashley Brown      PF    5   1-2   0-0   0   2   0  0   2
Anzhelika Bure    SG    5   1-4   0-0   0   1   0  0   2

Turnovers: 8 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 2, J.Bing 1, 
C.Stewart 2, A.Brown 1)
Blocked Shots: 1 (C.Stewart 1)
Steals: 4 (C.Stewart 1, A.Merkle 1, M.Lewellen 1, 
B.Grier 1)
3P FGs: 2-7 (C.Harrington 0-1, C.Stewart 2-3, A.Riggle 
0-1, A.Bure 0-2)

Western Illinois (2-12, 0-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Brynn Tyler       C    28   2-4   2-2   3   4   0  2   6
Yareli Morgan     PF   28   1-5   6-6   5   7   1  0   9
Carmen Pittman    SF   24   2-4   0-0   0   0   2  3   4
Eden Bittner      SG   24   1-3   0-0   1   1   3  3   3
Brianna Joyner    PG   30   4-8   3-3   0   4   1  0  12
A. Rutherford     SG   16   2-5   0-0   1   2   0  0   4
Ali Elliott       SF   13   1-4   0-0   0   1   0  4   2
Chloe Martinez    PF   17   0-5   0-2   1   3   0  0   0
Mylee Mead        C     9   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Amaya Mackay      PG    6   0-4   0-0   0   1   0  0   0
Leah Lafrance     PF    5   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  1   0

Turnovers: 9 (C.Pittman 1, E.Bittner 2, B.Joyner 2, 
A.Rutherford 1, A.Elliott 3)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 1 (B.Joyner 1)
3P FGs: 3-8 (Y.Morgan 1-2, E.Bittner 1-2, B.Joyner 1-2, 
C.Martinez 0-1, A.Mackay 0-1)

Player of Game: PG Abagail Merkle (SD)

FINALLY. A 9-game losing streak comes to an end. It's against what might be the worst team in the Summit League this year, but we'll take it.

It was a tough first half. We couldn't get more that a couple of baskets ahead of them but we finally got a 10-0 run that helped us get a 37-26 halftime lead. We didn't shoot well - 44.4 percent - but they shot 30.2 percent for the entire game. They corrected their defensive mistakes in the second half - and we regressed. But that double-digit lead held and the Fighting Leathernecks could not erase it.

Our bench only contributed eight of those 54 total points. Angelina Choe got us 13 rebounds, Stewart and Merkle scored in double-digits, and we looked decent out there in stretches.

But I'm still not satisfied. How far are we going to be if the only teams we can beat are the Western Illinoises of the world? An eighth-place finish out of nine teams is not where I want to end this season. I kept my thoughts to myself as we drove back to South Dakota. Once again, the western part of the state got hit but in the east, no snow.

(* * *)

I called Coach Tomlinson and poured out my dissatisfaction. I asked him if he wouldn't mind un-retiring in order to become an assistant coach at South Dakota.

"Oh God no, Mark. I got out at that racket. Besides, coach women? I don't think I could do it."

"If you don't think you can do it, then help me keep from shooting someone."

"All right, I'll give you some advice then," he said. "I hate to give advice, but I will. The first thing is you need to review your coaching philosophy. Have you got it written down?"

"No."

"Then write it down. And I'm going to ask you to do two things that might seem the opposite of each other. All right?"

"Fine. What are they?"

"The first one is don't lower your expectations. Don't lower your standards. Find some standards, and stick to them. If you whip their asses after losses like you just told me, you better be prepared to whip their asses after every single home game that they lose. Even if you don't think you're reaching them, you need to be consistent."

"What's the other one?"

"Don't lose your control. For God sakes, Mark, keep it in check. When you played at James Madison, you always had a very hard time with that. You need to set the example and stay positive. If their coach is flying off the handle in practice, your players will start to fly off the handle in games. You have to have controlled discipline."

"You yelled at us all the time!"

"Yes, and when I lost my temper I regretted it and walked away. I'm worried that you're starting to resent these players for their losses. I would tape myself - videotape - during a practice so I could watch my own behavior. Nothing destructive should come out of your mouth. If you condemn, condemn the behavior and not the person."

"Sounds like John Wooden."

"Well, how many championships did Wooden win? You'll teach those players a lot more if you can keep your cool than if you start ranting like a wild man every time you face difficulty. Do you curse?"

"Sometimes."

"Stop it. Yeah, I say shit but like I said - I regret it when I do. But you have to buid a team. A coach can't build a team. Only a team can build a team. Think of yourself not as a director, but as a team builder. That would be a good start."

(* * *)

On wednesday, January 9th we had the first matchup between two top 10 teams all season. The #1 ranked Baylor Lady Bears (15-0) took on the #9 Oklahoma Sooners in a Big Twelve matchup. Oklahoma's only loss was to Louisville in the very first game of the season, so one of these teams was going to have their winning streak broken.

Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a game. The Lady Bears led 46-32 at the half and the Sooners never challenged them. Junior SF Addison Olivier scored 28 points and senior SG Mattie Moeller added 20 for Baylor on the way to a 77-53 victory where not a single Sooner scored in double-digits. Baylor forced 23 turnovers from their helpless opponents and they were looking like they might go undefeated.

(* * *)

Meanwhile, I was trying to hold it together and trying to keep things calm. Every now and then, we would tape a practice so it wasn't too hard to get someone to tape the thing without suspicious. So I got a chance to watch myself coach.

There were times when I embarrassed myself watching the DVD. I could be unclear, or profane, or miss an opportunity to make a teaching point. And I still hadn't come up with a clear coaching philosophy.

In the meantime, the there was still basketball.

January 10, 2013 - North Dakota State (4-10, 1-1) at South Dakota (3-11, 1-1)

Winner goes to the front part of the Summit League bus; loser goes to the back.

The Bisons of NDSU were driven by two high-scoring players. PG Saige Christie scored 15.1 ppg, second in the conference, and senior SF Haylee Mull wasn't far behind with 12.7 points per game. They were also a tough team in the post, with senior C Claire Ramirez scoring 8.1 rpg. (The team was second in the conference in offensive rebounding.)

Did they have weaknesses? They weren't much of a passing team; they couldn't be with two players making up the bulk of their offense (after Haylee Mull, the next best scorer was senior backup PF Anahi Vestal with 6.3 ppg). Their best win of the year was against 8-6 North Carolina A&T, everyone else they had beaten could be decently be put in the category of "negligible". (Unfortunately, we were still in that category.) The team was just 1-5 on the road.

The goal - focus on Christie and Mull. "This is not a passing team," I said. "But we are, so let's use that to our advantage."

South Dakota 68, North Dakota State 48

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Claire Ramirez    C    30   1-5   0-0   1   6   1  4   2
Addison Wood      PF   25   2-3   3-4   1   3   0  3   7
Haylee Mull       SF   14   2-5   0-0   0   1   0  4   5
Mariam Rapp       SG   30   3-6   3-4   1   3   3  1   9
Saige Christie    PG   34   2-9   0-0   2   5   2  3   5
Anahi Vestal      PG   23   2-7   1-2   1   2   2  1   6
Erica Rochelle    SF   15   3-6   0-0   0   0   1  3   6
Abigail Borst     SG    9   2-5   0-0   2   2   0  2   5
Addison Kushner   PF   11   1-2   0-0   0   1   0  3   2
Addison Taylor    SF    4   0-2   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Jocelyn Finlay    C     4   0-0   0-0   1   2   0  0   0
Isabella Warman   PF    2   0-0   1-2   1   1   0  0   1

Turnovers: 13 (C.Ramirez 1, A.Wood 1, H.Mull 1, M.Rapp 
1, S.Christie 3, A.Vestal 1, E.Rochelle 3, A.Borst 1, 
A.Kushner 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 2 (A.Wood 1, H.Mull 1)
3P FGs: 4-13 (C.Ramirez 0-1, H.Mull 1-2, M.Rapp 0-2, 
S.Christie 1-4, A.Vestal 1-2, E.Rochelle 0-1, A.Borst 
1-1)

South DakotaStats  (4-11, 2-1):
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    28   2-4   3-6   2   6   2  0   7
C. Harrington     PF   28   1-3   2-2   0   7   3  2   5
Jessica Bing      SF   27   6-8   6-9   1   3   2  4  18
Catalina Stewart  SG   33   4-7   1-3   0   3   1  3  10
Abagail Merkle    PG   28  5-11   2-2   2   6   1  2  12
Allison Riggle    PG   16   2-7   2-2   0   0   3  2   7
Maliah Lewellen   PF   18   1-1   0-0   0   2   1  1   2
Bella Grier       SF   12   0-1   1-3   0   2   1  0   1
Ashley Brown      C     6   2-2   2-2   2   3   0  0   6
Anzhelika Bure    SG    2   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Leah Alexander    PF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  1   0

Turnovers: 9 (A.Choe 1, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 3, 
C.Stewart 1, A.Merkle 1, A.Riggle 2)
Blocked Shots: 1 (C.Harrington 1)
Steals: 3 (C.Harrington 1, M.Lewellen 2)
3P FGs: 3-8 (C.Harrington 1-1, C.Stewart 1-3, A.Riggle 
1-4)

Player of Game: SF Jessica Bing (SD)

That was one of the best games I've seen all year. We now have a winning streak - two consecutive wins!

We led by eight points at halftime, but the Bison came back and tried to close the gap, moving to within a couple of baskets. Up 54-43 with 6:45 to go, we went on a 10-1 run near the end of the game to seal the deal. Players took their shots at the right time, and NDSU kept sending us to the line. Neither Christie nor Mull could get off the blocks and NDSU resorted to hacking our players, committing 24 personal foulds during their game. They sent us to the line 29 times and we hit 19 of them.

Their 2-3 zone? Not a problem, we shot 52.3 percent. In every aspect of the game we were a better team.

"What was the difference between that game and the one against UMKC?" I told the players after the game. "You didn't think you could win that first game. I could tell. But you knew that you could win this one. We are now off to the start we want to have. There's nothing I can say after that but: keep it going!"

(* * *)

While we were busy getting a home win against North Dakota State that same night there was another Top 10 women's hoops matchup. #3 Florida State at 12-0 faced a visiting #6 Ohio State team that had only one loss. A pair of free throws by senior SG Vida Marcos with 1:25 left brought the Seminoles to with three, but Ohio State senior PG Aubrey Brooks found junior SF Alani Levi for the bucket for the Buckeyes to go up by five, 67-62 with 52 seconds left. Then Brooks managed to get a piece of the ball that Florida State senior PG Georgia Householder was bringing across the midline - Householder was able to prevent the steal, but it turned into a jump ball situation and the arrow gave the Buckeyes the ball back. That was the critical play of the game on the way to a 71-62 Ohio State win.

The Buckeyes win drops the number of undefeated teams in women's basketball to five: #1 Baylor, #2 Maryland, #10 Purdue, #12 California and #14 UNC Wilmington.

(* * *)

The weather was definitely getting colder. There was a twenty-point drop over a couple of days and the temperature fell to six degrees Fahrenheit on January 12th. But no snow.

Oh it was definitely cold everywhere else. Below -30 in some parts of North Dakota. -12 below in Minneapolis. -5 in Kansas City and in Denver. We had been lucky this winter, but I wondered how long that luck would last.

January 12, 2013 - South Dakota (4-11, 2-1) at IUPUI (2-12, 0-3)

Off to play the Jags in Indianapolis. Definitely an overcast day driving into Indianapolis on Saturday; I was glad I was going to be inside.

It was a tough year for the Jaguars. They managed to get a 73-53 upset win in Milwaukee but they usually lost by 27.4 points per game. (#8 Notre Dame delivered them a 96-36 whipping in The Jungle.) They were at the bottom of the league in points, almost at the bottom in rebounds and ranked last or next to last in almost every category.

Sophomore SF Luna Cusic scored 6.3 points per game but had 3.2 turnovers per game and was a defensive liability. Their best player was a freshman shooting guard named Emily Nguyen who scored 9.8 ppg and 5.4 rpg.

The hard part would be to keep our team from overlooking IUPUI. They had overlooked Western Illinois and paid the price for it. I emphasized that we'd be playing in a gym that only seated 1,200 - "the fans will be on top of you" - and that no team likes to lose at home. ("We certainly don't.") "We're going to play South Dakota ball today. I expect the best effort from everyone here. We are building the house and we're building it in Indianapolis!"

South Dakota 54, IUPUI 49

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    28   1-6   0-2   3  11   1  3   2
C. Harrington     PF   22   5-6   2-2   2   6   0  3  13
Jessica Bing      SF   30   1-7   2-6   2   3   2  3   4
Catalina Stewart  SG   32   3-8   4-4   2   4   3  0  10
Abagail Merkle    PG   27   0-3   4-4   0   2   1  3   4
Allison Riggle    PG   20   1-6   6-6   2   3   1  3   9
Maliah Lewellen   PF   15   3-6   1-2   3   3   1  1   7
Bella Grier       SF   14   1-3   0-0   0   2   0  1   2
Ashley Brown      C    10   1-2   1-1   1   7   1  0   3
Anzhelika Bure    SG    2   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 12 (A.Choe 2, J.Bing 1, C.Stewart 5, 
A.Riggle 2, M.Lewellen 2)
Blocked Shots: 1 (B.Grier 1)
Steals: 3 (J.Bing 1, A.Merkle 1, M.Lewellen 1)
3P FGs: 2-6 (C.Harrington 1-1, J.Bing 0-1, C.Stewart 
0-1, A.Riggle 1-1, M.Lewellen 0-1, B.Grier 0-1)

IUPUIStats  (2-13, 0-4):
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Zoe Brown         PF   14   1-2   1-2   0   0   1  5   3
Olivia Ortiz      C    27   1-3   1-2   0   3   0  5   3
Luna Cusick       SF   24   1-5   1-2   0   1   1  5   4
Emily Nguyen      SG   34  3-11   0-0   1   4   0  2   7
Addisyn Nolasco   PG   31   4-8   5-5   0   3   1  3  16
Armani Fontenot   SF   22   4-7   2-2   1   3   0  0  11
Lucy Göttler      PF   21   0-0   2-2   0   4   0  2   2
Kloe Lucas        C    10   0-0   0-0   1   1   1  0   0
Cheyanne Levan    PF    7   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  1   0
Lindsay Moss      PG    8   1-5   1-1   0   2   1  0   3
J. Sadowski       SF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Kaliyah McQuiston C     1   0-1   0-0   0   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 11 (Z.Brown 2, O.Ortiz 2, L.Cusick 2, 
E.Nguyen 1, A.Nolasco 2, L.Göttler 1, K.Lucas 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 2 (E.Nguyen 1, A.Nolasco 1)
3P FGs: 6-15 (L.Cusick 1-3, E.Nguyen 1-4, A.Nolasco 
3-5, A.Fontenot 1-1, L.Moss 0-2)

Player of Game: PF Caroline Harrington (SD)

What we built in Indianapolis might not have been up to code, but I'll take it.

The first half, we were horrible. Words can't describe it. They marched out to an 8-0 lead and I had to call a time out after Luna Cusick buried a three. "Arms length, people! You have to stay next to them, you can't just stand and wave your arms!"

We couldn't hit a damned thing. With 8:11 in the first the Jags were up 16-5. Merkle gave a glance at the scoreboard before heading into the huddle, and I told Abagail Merkle, "Don't look at the scoreboard, the scoreboard can't make you run laps but I can!" Angelina Choe gave up a stupid foul at the buzzer and the Jags added a free throw to make it 22-13 at the half.

I managed to keep my temper. "These are Jaguars. They're chokers. Make them choke. Keep the pressure on them and don't let it up."

After a brief 24-13 lead to start the second half, we started believing and climbing back. Down 27-21, we went on an 8-2 run with Maliah Lewellen - of all people! - trying to get the team fired up.

Cusick had been hurting us in the first, but with about 12:38 in the second half Cusick melted down after she got called for her third foul. She stomped her feet - literally jumped in the air and stomped them - and implied that the female referee engaged in multiple acts of incest. As her teammates pulled her away, she got charged with a flagrant technical foul and was out of the game.

I used that as a teachable moment. "Keep the pressure on! They're starting to beat themselves."

It was neck and neck for a little while and we kept the man defense going strong. By 6:04 remaining, we led 37-32. The question was whether or not we could keep it up. We led 46-39 with 2:52 left. But a basket by Lindsay Moss plus a foul by Abigail Merkle gave Moss an extra free throw to close to 48-44 with 1:40 left.

"You did it for 38 minutes," I told them. "We need two more."

But on the inbound by USD, Jessica Bing was fouled and she went for two free throws. The first one - a MISS. Okay.

The second one - a MISS! It would be IUPUI's ball but - no! Bing got her own rebound and she fought her way across the lane and bunnied it in! That was the hustle award for the night.

It was 54-49 USD with 43 seconds left, and the Jags decided to Bing back to the line. But this time, she missed BOTH free throws and I said a dirty word very loudly. 32 seconds left.

Crunch time. We chased Armani Fontenot all across the court. We didn't give her an open look. They had no timeouts to give and they were forced to eat the clock. In desperation before time expired, they chucked a 3-pointer that had no chance and we got the rebound and our third Summit League win.

Caroline Harrington had 13 points, Catalina Stewart had 10. Angelina Choe was strong in the post as always with 11 rebounds. (We outrebounded the Jags 41-23.)

"Let's not rest on our laurels," I told them. "Next week we have Sam Houston State. And on Saturday, we are going to give the Jackrabbits a taste of some rabbit stew!"

WBCA Top Ten

   #  Team                      FPV  Record  Points  Prv
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1.  Baylor                   (72)    17-0    1800    1
  2.  Maryland                         15-0    1728    2
  3.  Ohio State                       14-1    1656    6
  4.  Florida State                    13-1    1584    3
  5.  Duke                             14-1    1511    4
  6.  Stanford                         13-1    1441    7
  7.  Notre Dame                       12-1    1368    8
  8.  Illinois State                   15-1    1296   11
  9.  Purdue                           14-0    1222   10
 10.  UNC Wilmington                   15-0    1128   14

By this time, the only four undefeated teams were the ones listed here. Illinois State and UNC Wilmington were interesting to see in the Top 10. And Connecticut finally made its way into the WBCA Top 25, the biggest jump from an unranked team to #15 with a 12-1 record. You could never count Nathan Padilla out.

On January 15, after months of cold (but relatively dry) weather, the snow finally hit Vermillion. With the western part of the state getting hit again, Vermillion got - [i]two inches[/i]. In Vermillion, we don't even call two inches "snow".

(* * *)

[b]January 2013[/b]

The first products to use memristor technology become available. They work on the principle of variable resistance. Yeah, you don't know what that means, and neither do I. Basically, this technology makes things very power efficient, on the order of two levels of magnitude. If your cellphone ran out of power in 6 hours it would run out of power in a day if it used memristors. By the end of the year you'd have cellphones that didn't require a repowering every night and laptops you could take on a few days worth of vacation without the power running out.

http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/1074/electronicaldesign.jpg

[b][size=2]The memristor looks like this. Or maybe not. Who can tell?[/size][/b]

Supposedly, memristors were going to change how machine memory worked. But the biggest thing to happen was the end of the "boot up" sequence of computers. With memristors, you could turn on a new PC and Windows 8 would boot up almost instantaneously, flipping through its sequence of screens in a few seconds. If you turn on a blender, you don't have to wait 30 seconds before it wakes up. Computers were starting to remain "awake" now, going from a cold state to ready-to-type in just a few seconds.

It was at this time that people were starting to talk about "exascale computing". No, I don't know what that is either; don't ask me to tell you.

(* * *)

[b]WRITER'S NOTES[/b]

Trust me, I'm very happy that we've won three straight games in the Summit League. For a while there, I Was getting very unhappy. But there's a saying in college basketball that winning covers all faults. "Fire someone? Why? We just won three straight games!"

I'm sort of flip-flopping now about the firing. Maybe the end of January, I'll think differently.

[b]Next time[/b]: We finish January as more games come up: Sam Houston State. Tough games against Oakland, IPFW and Nebraska-Omaha. But the big game is against South Dakota's rival school, South Dakota State. We meet Aaliyah Gray for the first time, and Isabella Crumley might be forced to make a tough decision.

Petrel · February 2, 2012

January 2013

As we prepared for a game against visiting Sam Houston State - a warm-up before our game against the Jackrabbits - the big news was an impending snowstorm that was supposedly going to wreak havoc on the entire state and not just the western part of South Dakota. There had been some false alarms this year, but the two inches of snow on the ground was a promise of more to come.

Our current schedule for this week was a tight one - play vs. Sam Houston State tonight, then South Dakota State in three days, and then Caitlyn Williams and I would fly to Colorado to convince Aaliyah Gray to put on a South Dakota uniform. I struggled to keep calm during all of this and not take things out on my players.

Meanwhile, it was starting to look like this outside:

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/4377/2173259291e966eb8896.jpg

January 16, 2013 - Sam Houston State (2-12) at South Dakota (5-11)

How did we get a non-conference game right in the middle of January? It was an accident of scheduling. I had been trying to find great teams to play but no one wanted to come to South Dakota. With very little time to get a set schedule, Sam Houston State offered us a home-and-away, with the Bearkats coming to Vermillion first and with South Dakota scheduled to travel to Huntsville, Texas in 2014.

The Bearkats hadn't impressed anyone yet this year. THey had six point wins against Rice and New Mexico state but had suffered a 10-game losing streak this season and had lost to future Southland Conference team Houston Baptist 52-38 just three days earlier. They were the lowest-scoring team in the Southland conference and had a total point differential of -14.5 per game. Last in steals, last in blocks, last in turnovers.

They did have a freshma to worry about, SF Gracelynn Nissen. Nissen led the team with 12.3 points per game. She didn't tend to pass the ball much because there was no one reliable on the Bearkats other than herself to shoot it. Sam Houston State had turned the ball over 17 times in their loss to Houston Baptist, and we wanted to help them along.

The crowds looked thin for this one. The governor of South Dakota was warning people to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary. But this is the Summit League, and we don't stop games for anything. Sam Houston State made it to the DakotaDome through heavy snow.

Katie Ulmer took me aside before the game. "You'd better not curse," she said, "because the DakotaDome is so empty they'll hear it in the back row." Only the absolute diehards of women's basketball (like the Donut Lady) showed up for this one.

I focused strictly on Sam Houston State. "It's going to sound empty when you go out there. But you've done things right in practice all week. So go and do those things right again, and let's get out of here."

South Dakota 50, Sam Houston State 45

Sam Houston State (2-13)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Madison Vail C 17 0-4 2-2 2 5 0 4 2

Alexis Pedigo PF 21 2-5 0-0 0 0 1 4 4

Gracelynn Nissen SF 33 5-11 1-2 0 5 1 2 11

Addison Berryhill SG 25 2-3 1-2 0 5 1 5 6

Olivia Ramsdell PG 35 3-9 0-0 0 3 0 2 7

Arabella Irick SG 16 0-3 1-2 0 1 0 2 1

Nadia Neilson C 26 3-4 0-0 0 4 1 2 6

Esme McCombs SF 18 3-3 2-2 3 4 1 2 8

J. Lorfeuve PF 3 0-2 0-0 0 0 1 0 0

Olivia Sublett SF 3 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Emily Salisbury C 3 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Turnovers: 13 (M.Vail 2, A.Pedigo 1, G.Nissen 2,

A.Berryhill 2, O.Ramsdell 2, N.Neilson 2, E.McCombs 1,

O.Sublett 1)

Blocked Shots: 1 (M.Vail 1)

Steals: 4 (A.Pedigo 2, A.Irick 1, E.McCombs 1)

3P FGs: 2-12 (M.Vail 0-2, A.Pedigo 0-1, G.Nissen 0-1,

A.Berryhill 1-2, O.Ramsdell 1-4, A.Irick 0-2)

South Dakota (6-11)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Angelina Choe C 30 2-2 1-2 4 10 0 3 5

C. Harrington PF 28 3-10 3-4 4 9 0 1 9

Jessica Bing SF 26 5-9 4-5 2 2 1 3 14

Catalina Stewart SG 32 3-8 4-6 2 6 1 3 10

Abagail Merkle PG 28 2-12 0-0 3 5 2 3 4

Allison Riggle PG 16 0-3 1-2 0 2 0 0 1

Maliah Lewellen C 19 3-5 0-1 3 5 0 2 6

Bella Grier SF 11 0-3 0-0 1 2 0 1 0

Ashley Brown PF 7 0-1 0-0 1 3 0 0 0

Anzhelika Bure SG 1 0-0 1-2 0 0 0 0 1

Adalyn Matz SF 1 0-1 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Turnovers: 14 (A.Choe 1, J.Bing 2, C.Stewart 7,

M.Lewellen 3, A.Brown 1)

Blocked Shots: 2 (A.Choe 1, C.Stewart 1)

Steals: 6 (A.Choe 1, C.Harrington 2, J.Bing 1, A.Merkle

1, M.Lewellen 1)

3P FGs: 0-11 (C.Harrington 0-4, C.Stewart 0-3, A.Riggle

0-2, M.Lewellen 0-1, A.Matz 0-1)

Player of Game: SF Jessica Bing (SD)

</pre><div></div>

It wasn't a pretty win, but I'd take what I could get. I almost let the ugliness of the win overshadow the fact that it was a win.

The first half was low scoring, and the Bearkats led for most of it. With about four minutes left in the first, we caught up with them and we took a 20-20 tie into halftime off of two Caroline Harrington free throws. Sam Houston State played a 2-3 zone throughout the game and it was a defense we had done very well against.

As the second half ground ahead, Sam Houston State led 38-34 with 10 minutes to go. But an 8-0 run shifted the balance and we were back in the lead again. With 2:31 left in the game, Addison Berryhill hit a 3-pointer to tie the game at 45-45. Abigail Merkle took the next shot - but it was miss from the left corner and with 2:12 to go the Bearkats had the ball back.

But Caroline Herrington stole an errant pass from Madison Vail and we had the ball back again. Sam Houston State sent Catalina Stewart to the line where she hit both of them to give us a 47-45 lead. Then Catalina got the rebound when the Bearkats missed the ball, and Maliah Lewellen found Stewart right at the free throw line where Stewart delivered a set jumper with 38 seconds left to give us a 49-45 lead.

Lewellen chest-bumped Stewart. "WAY TO GO, CATALINA! GO GET IT!" Our California drama queen was a real red ass on the court. Stewart needed the ego bump, she had turned the ball over seven times tonight.

With possibly the last possession for the Bearkats, we knew they were going to get it to Berryhill; our job was to stop them. And for once, a ref did the right them! Gracelynn Nissen had been planted in the paint all night and with 0:19 left the ref called Nissen for 3 seconds in the key!

The coach of the Bearkats, Brenda Kinder, wasn't happy. "You'll call that? You won't let them play?"

"Don't listen to her, Dena," I said, knowing Dena Davis as a Summit League ref. "They've been standing in the paint all night!"

Dena Davis wasn't going to back down. We had the ball back, all they could do was foul us, and we hit 1 of 2 to make it 50-45. We chased them across the court, and they tried a 3-pointer, but it was too late. South Dakota had its fourth straight win. We only shot 33 percent and we went 0-for-11 from 3-point land, but the team seemed a lot more focused. I was trying to be a good guy, maybe it was working.

Lauren Word told me after the game that this was the longest win streak in my career - four games long. So far this season we were 6-11. But the next three games - against South Dakota State, Oakland, and IPFW - would play a big role in determining how life in the Summit League would be for us this year.

(* * *)

And meanwhile, the snow kept falling. It almost look like two inches of snow fell during the game. We scrambled to find a place on campus that could put up the Bearkats for the night, as the Sioux City Airport closed. The players courageously trod their way across campus and rather than taking my long walk home, I decided to crash on a couch in the men's basketball player's lounge and think about our recent run of success. Could we win 10 games this season?

(* * *)

As it turned out, we would get 17 inches of snow over the next two days! That was two feet of snow, with just enough freezing rain to make it interesting.

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/7043/snowplow.jpg

How I got back home. The helpful snowplow.

Usually, the University of South Dakota doesn't close down school for even a blizzard, but this record-setting snowfall made even the university take notice. Students at USD got two days off, expected to be back to class on Friday.

I had a helpful snowplow (property of USD) get me home but others in South Dakota weren't so lucky. Roads were closed across the state including Interstate I-90. Four more people died in South Dakota due to weather-related causes (one man was killed when a snowplow backed into him) and a state of emergency was declared as roads were closed across the state.

I worried a little bit. We still had to get out and visit Aaliyah Gray; the airport had to be cleared up for us to do that. South Dakota State was coming to Vermillion on Saturday, would they make it? (I didn't see why not, no Summit League game had ever been canceled).

In the meantime, we practiced as much as we could. While the players weren't in school, we made sure they hit the books nonetheless, considering this valuable time to get as far ahead on assignments as possible.

The coaches weren't busy, either. Isabella Crumley still hadn't made a decision, increasing my annoyance with her. Other names on our list of blue chippers disappeared. Kendall Henning to SMU. Juliette Delrue of Fance to James Madison, my alma mater. Bella Manning in Missouri to Drake. Cecilia Dominguez to George Mason. We filled those blank spots with other names, including a pair of overlooked players by the names of Isabella Hyder and Alyssa Bunker, both from the state of Georgia.

But of course, life would keep throwing us curveballs. The athletic director, Willie Burbank, called me into his office. "Mark," he said, "I just want to give you a heads-up on the fact that we might have to deal with protests during the South Dakota State game."

The coach of South Dakota State - Elizabeth Engstrom - was the only out homosexual women's basketball coach in NCAA Division I women's basketball. She had come to Brookings from Portland State after James Fillmore flew the coop to Western Kentucky. I'd venture to guess that 98 percent of South Dakotans couldn't have told you who Elizabeth Engstrom was.

"I got this letter from the South Dakota League of Decency. Have you ever heard of them?"

"No."

"Me neither. Apparently, they've warned us that they're coming to hold a protest after the game."

"If they were protesting Elizabeth Engstrom, how come the state hasn't heard of them?" I asked.

"I suspect it's because they wanted to wait until a game came along that everyone would see. It's one of the two biggest women's basketball games in the state." (The other one was the game that took place in Brookings at SDSU's home court.)

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"If someone gets on the court, or if game play is stopped or suspended or whatever, you might need to take the microphone and restore order. Make sure our players are protected. We're making damned sure SDSU's players are protected. And with our kids on campus stir-crazy due to the snow, who knows how they might act out during gametime? We already keep a close eye on T-shirts and posters. The last thing the university needs is some spectator making this gay thing an issue! We don't need the university picketed by the ACLU! God, I really wish that those idiots at State had hired someone else!"

"We are keeping this under wraps," Burbank said. "Last thing I need is a bunch of lesbos from out-of-state holding a kiss-in rally or some such thing."

I nodded. Restore order. Got it. I'd let Williams, Reavis and Ulmer know and we'd get our kids and SDSU's players off the court if it came to that. The Summit League would probably end up replaying the game if things got too hot. It seemed that neither KELO nor KSFY had anything to say about this "protest", but I was told - no interviews on the topic without prior athletic department approval.

(* * *)

January 19, 2013 - South Dakota State (10-7, 4-1) at South Dakota (6-11, 3-1)

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9045/logosv.jpg

The last time we had beaten South Dakota State? An 87-83 win from 2003 when both schools were in Division II. But both schools have been playing each other for over 100 years. For the most part, it's been a good natured rivalry. Naturally, the women's game isn't 100 years old but South Dakota and South Dakota State have been "bitter" rivals since the beginning.

However, the rivalry stopped for a while in 2004 when the Jackrabbits moved up to Division I. The Coyotes remained in Division II, making it to the championship game in 2008. But South Dakota State became one of the big Cinderella stories, the kind of contender that was dangerous to play. South Dakota found themselves in the shadow of their rival and quickly planned a move to Division I which rekindled the rivalry.

We knew this would be a tough game from the start. In the Summit League the Jackrabbits were second in points scored, second in rebounding, first in assists, firsts in blocked shots and first in (fewest) personal fouls. In every major category they were ahead of us.

Furthermore, they were a much deeper team than we were. They still have SF Cheyanne Hardiman, who scored 15.9 ppg the previous year and whose 16.2 ppg was leading the Summit League. Sophomore PG Susan Wisdom added 11.8 ppg and had 3.5 assists per game. Senior PF Chelsea Norris was a monster in the post, averaging 8.4 ppg and 12.2 rebounds per game to lead the Summit League in rebound and in blocked shots with 2.3 per game.

This was a very important game to us so we brought in a guest speaker - Angela Spokes, who worked as an administrator at USD and who was a sophomore on the 2003 team that got that last win against the Jacks. I was hoping that she'd make some sort of Vince Lombardi-esque Call to Arms, but I was mistaken. She talked about the goofy and annoying things her coaches did, relaxing the team more than focusing them.

"Our coach used to say, 'steak and potatoes'!"

"Building the foundation!" someone chuckled from the back of the room. (I didn't catch her.)

"Steak and potatoes! And that our practices were eating our vegetables! And I'll always remember what he said after that game. He said, "Doesn't dessert taste really great? Those kind of wins? That's dessert. And I know that you all want some dessert tonight."

With the team appropriately warmed up - I suppose - I thanked Angela and reviewed what we needed to do. "They play the same kind of defense we do," I said to the team before the game, "and they will try to run on you if they think they can. The goal is to play the same kind of defense that won us four games. And our posts have to step up. Caroline, Angelina, I need great games from you today."

"I keep talking about that house from last year. Last year, we laid the foundation." (Laughter.) "This year, hammer and nails. But we need to see some supporting beams and if we can beat the Jacks, that is going to be a very big thing for this program. I've demanded toughness all year, and this is no different from what we faced in December. If you can find your inner Tough Guy, we can win this game."

South Dakota 77, South Dakota State 54

South Dakota State (10-8, 4-2)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Kayla Craft C 26 2-7 0-0 3 5 0 3 4

Chelsea Norris PF 35 2-6 1-2 2 11 1 3 5

Cheyanne Hardiman SF 36 8-19 7-9 2 7 2 2 23

Emily Bentz SG 30 1-5 3-5 0 2 0 3 5

Susan Wisdom PG 32 3-11 4-4 1 1 4 2 12

M. Donaldson PF 16 1-6 1-2 0 1 0 2 3

Lizbeth Ovalle C 13 0-1 2-2 1 2 1 0 2

Casey Smith PG 4 0-1 0-0 0 1 2 0 0

Jaliyah Weatherby SF 5 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Charley Davis SF 1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Annabel Archer C 2 0-1 0-0 1 1 0 0 0

Chelsea Whiteley SG 2 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Turnovers: 9 (C.Hardiman 2, E.Bentz 2, S.Wisdom 4,

C.Smith 1)

Blocked Shots: 4 (C.Norris 2, C.Hardiman 1, E.Bentz 1)

Steals: 6 (C.Hardiman 2, E.Bentz 2, S.Wisdom 2)

3P FGs: 2-13 (E.Bentz 0-2, S.Wisdom 2-6, M.Donaldson

0-3, C.Smith 0-1, A.Archer 0-1)

South Dakota State (7-11, 4-1)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Angelina Choe C 28 1-4 1-6 2 9 1 1 3

C. Harrington PF 23 5-12 0-0 2 9 1 3 13

Jessica Bing SF 29 5-11 5-5 1 3 3 2 16

Catalina Stewart SG 33 5-7 0-0 1 8 3 4 11

Abagail Merkle PG 26 4-6 0-0 0 3 3 2 8

Allison Riggle PG 16 2-4 3-4 0 0 2 3 8

Maliah Lewellen C 17 1-3 0-0 1 4 3 2 3

Bella Grier PF 15 4-5 0-1 1 5 1 2 8

Ashley Brown PF 9 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Anzhelika Bure SG 3 1-1 0-0 0 1 0 0 2

Adalyn Matz SF 2 2-2 0-0 0 0 0 0 5

Turnovers: 12 (A.Choe 1, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 2,

C.Stewart 4, A.Merkle 1, M.Lewellen 3)

Blocked Shots: 3 (A.Choe 2, C.Stewart 1)

Steals: 5 (J.Bing 1, A.Merkle 1, A.Riggle 2, A.Bure 1)

3P FGs: 8-16 (C.Harrington 3-6, J.Bing 1-3, C.Stewart

1-3, A.Riggle 1-2, M.Lewellen 1-1, A.Matz 1-1)

Player of Game: SF Jessica Bing (SD)

</pre><div></div>

What surprised me was that we hit four of our first five shots and led 9-2 two minutes into the game, forcing the Jacks to burn up a timeout right away. We had a nice crowd - at least as big as last year's - as the students on campus were dying for something to do after all that snow. The crowd jumped on them - but if there were any gay slurs shouted, you'd never hear them in a women's basketball crowd.

We were just taking it to SDSU. Before ten minutes were over we were up in double-digits, 16-6. They couldn't hit squat. But we were playing at a gear I don't think I've seen in two years.

The play I'll remember is when Catalina Stewart was bringing the ball up the court and just as she brought it over the midline, Susan Wisdom steals the ball leaving only Angelina Choe to defend against the combination of Riggle and Kayla Craft. Classic two-on-one breakaway right?

No. Wisdom comes to make the layup while Riggle is distracted, but she doesn't see Stewart sprinting behind her. As Wisdom is a split second away from the release, Stewart leaps up and blocks the ball from beind. A Jacks fan shouted "over the back" but there was no physical contact and Choe gets the rebound! For Stewart to cover that distance, that was a real hustle play!

We led 35-27 at halftime. "You're in the zone," I said, "and I don't know how you're doing it, but live in the moment! IF you're in the zone then just get comfortable there!"

They must have agreed with that bit of gibberish because with 9:22 left we were up 59-39. I knew that a great team like South Dakota State could erase a 20-point deficit so I didn't know what was going to happen but the bench players were holding hands and leaping out of their seats any time we made an impressive basket.

When Abagail Merkle scored on a breakaway to put us up 68-49 with just under four minutes left, I knew we had this one in the bag. The Jacks had that dead look in their eyes, that kind of look when you're just kicking yourself and you just want it to be over.

The pep band began to play "Kill the Wabbit" as the crowd began to chant:

C! O! Y! O! T! E! S!

C-O-Y-O-T-E-S!

GooooOOOOO YOTES!

When the buzzer sounded, the DakotaDome rang out, "The final score, South Dakota 77 ... !" and the crowd roared and drowned out the rest of the score. I thought that the crowd might rush the court but that usually doesn't happen in the women's game. After ten years, we had finally brought the mighty Jackrabbits down to earth.

As we left the court, the first person there to meet me was Willie Burbank. "That's a great win, Mark! That's going to look good at the end of 2015!" My two-year contract was up in 2015. He shook my hand like I was a multi-millionaire donor.

A reporter for the Volante asked me the key to the victory. "Defense, and a whole lot of 'I want it'. They played selfless today. Real Coyote basketball." When you shoot 54 percent and the other side shoots 29 percent, it's hard not to win. We outrebounded them, we hit 8 for 16 from 3-point range and we just hurt them all over the court.

we had won five straight games now. We were 4-1 in the conference and 7-11 for the season. We got 19 poitns from our bench and the Jacks only got five points. Hardiman got her points but we pretty much stopped everyone else.

"This was your dessert!" I told the team after the game. "Go home. Don't come back for practice tomorrow! Get a high-calorie dessert! I want you to call home, celebrate, and I don't want to see you back here until Monday! We'd have one day of practice before Oakland...and I didn't want the team to come down, not the way they were playing."

(* * *)

So what happened to the big protest? To the South Dakota League of Decency? They never showed up. All that expectation for nothing. Willie Burbank suggested that either it was a) a guy on the internet, or more likely, b) the weather storm that paralyzed South Dakota also paralyzed the League of Decency.

I mean, really? You're going to let 17 inches of snow stop you from doing the right thing? Or so you say?

(* * *)

In the meantime, Caitlyn Williams and I were immediately heading to Sioux City after the game. We intended to be in Colorado on Sunday the 20th, back home that next afternoon, and then off to Rochester, Michigan to play the 16-2 Oakland Golden Grizzlies.

Gray lived out in the middle of Wray, Colorado, the home of Wray High School.

Wray was small. Real small. There were only about 2000-3000 people or so that lived in Wray, and the citizens there were overwhelmingly white. There were a handful of black people in Wray, and Gray was among that handful.

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/5127/vfiles12067.jpg

Getting to Wray? Not easy. A flight from Sioux Falls to Denver. Then a two-plus hour drive from Denver to Wray.

Her father was an ATV salesman, and apparently a very good one. "I make a pretty decent living. I can't complain." The house was definitely nice. Gray seemed like a nice young woman and clearly, the family was putting its best foot forward.

We ate at their house. Dinner chat was good. We then watched the DVD that we usually bring extolling the virtues of South Dakota. But afterwards, we were in for some roughness.

"I want to get something out the way first," Mr. Gray said. "I had Aaliyah accept an invite because I wanted to hear you out. The school seems like a decent college. But if it were up to me, I would not have my daughter going to South Dakota."

"Okay," I asked. "What specifically is a concern?"

"Well first, the fact that you don't win games. My daughter is the best player on her squad. She was an all-state senior in the state of Colorado. I know Aaliyah and she's very competitive and right now, South Dakota? I've never heard of South Dakota. Oh, I know South Dakota exists. It is a state. But I've followed women's ball for years. South Dakota State? Yeah, I've heard of it. South Dakota? Uh-uh. Not on the map."

"I've only been there for two years," I said. "And we just knocked off our major rival in our first win against the Jackrabbits in 10 years. I don't plan on stopping there."

"Even so, you have no footprint. The second is Montana has made us an offer. And once again, if it were up to me, I'd like her to take it. The second is that Arizona has been calling. This house looks like a nice house, but appearances can decieve. I'm in mortgage up to my eyeballs and money in the sales game comes and goes. Arizona - if they make an offer - can pay $3000 a year for living expenses. And I know that that won't happen at South Dakota."

"But Arizona hasn't made an offer?" I said.

"They've called, and that's all."

I turned to Aaliyah. "Aaliyah, do you really want to go to Arizona?"

"I don't really know," she said. She gave a little head shake.

"So clearly, Arizona is not your dream school," I said. "Besides, there's a saying in business. Getting awards is great, but if you want to show me how much you appreciate me as an employee, then pay me more. Likewise in basketball? If you want to show someone you appreciate them, you offer a scholarship. Yes, we don't have $3000 to give our players for cost of living. That might change in the future. Have we won a lot of games yet? No. But the program was pretty down when I got there."

"As for a footprint," I continued, "someone has to start walking before you can see footprints. Aaliyah was receptive and I walked here. Maybe we don't have the things that other schools offer. But our players like playing for us. You really have to see the campus to appreciate it."

"Right, but when are you going to make an offer to do that?" Mr. Gray asked skeptically.

"How soon does Aaliyah want to come?" I countered.

"How about next week?" I said. (We had a game against IPFW.)

Mr. Gray looked amazed. "Really?"

"Yeah. Campus visit."

"Not an "unofficial" campus visit?"

"No. I can have Aaliyah on campus next week."

"Hmm. NCAA rules say that two parents can come."

Those were the new rules agreed to in 2012. I really didn't want Aaliyah's parents there, but I didn't see that we had any choice. "Yep. That's absolutely true."

(* * *)

We walked out of the house into the cold Colorado air. "Well, what do you think?" Caitlyn asked.

"At least, this will be different from the Sofia Owens situation," I said. "At least, we'll have all of Aaliyah's nay-sayers together. I like Mr. Gray. I'd rather be stabbed in the front than stabbed in the back any day."

(* * *)

WBCA Top 10, 21 January 2013

# Team FPV Record Points Prv

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Baylor (72) 19-0 1800 1

2. Ohio State 16-1 1728 3

3. Stanford 15-1 1656 6

4. Notre Dame 14-1 1584 7

5. Florida State 14-1 1512 4

6. Duke 14-1 1431 5

7. Purdue 16-0 1377 9

8. Maryland 15-1 1296 2

9. Connecticut 14-1 1207 15

10. UNC Wilmington 17-0 1150 10

</pre><div></div>

The only undefeated teams in the women's game are in the Top 10. Connecticut finally breaks the Top 10, jumping six spots.

January 22, 2013 - South Dakota (7-11, 4-1) at Oakland (16-2, 5-0)

While Eastern South Dakota was under another snow watch, we were in Michigan to play against the Golden Grizzlies who were leading the Summit League. The winner of this game would be the leaders of the league.

But the Grizzlies had won 15 of their last 16 games. The year before, they won the league championship but lost in the Summit League tournament to South Dakota State. They had no intention of letting that happened again and from the game tape I'd see they were gunning for...well, bear. The closest any team had gotten to them was UMKC which was the only Summit League team to lose by single digits, 63-55. They beat South Dakota State by 17 points in Rochester.

They led the league in points, rebounds and steals. They only turned the ball over 11.7 times per game. They only had one weakness - they gave up 19.0 personal fouls per game, good for 7th in a 9-team conference.

Senior SG McKayla Musgrove was scoring 15.4 ppg - second in the conference - with just 26.8 ppg. She was 45-105 (42.9 percent) from behind the arc and could bring down the thunder like Thor if she got hot. Junior C Jacqueline Grover scored 10.2 ppg and 9.2 rpg, averaging almost a double-double.

In our brief time to practice, we worked on fundamentals. "Oakland will switch zones, depending on where you're scoring from. They can swing from a 2-3 to a 3-2 on the drop of a dime. So we have to be able to adjust. Everyone has to have a good game. No exceptions. But not just have a good game, but to adjust offensively on the fly."

So we practiced how certain sets would change if the Golden Grizzlies showed us a different zone. The problem is that we didn't have the kind of players that could duplicate what the Golden Grizzlies could do, even in a practice situation. I got out there and played a few minutes against my own team - and my foot was aching after 10 minutes. I would do my best to keep the team focused and keep them positive.

Oakland 63, South Dakota 42

South Dakota (7-12, 4-2)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Angelina Choe C 28 2-6 4-6 2 4 1 1 8

C. Harrington PF 24 2-4 0-0 1 2 2 1 5

Jessica Bing SF 28 2-7 0-0 1 5 2 2 4

Catalina Stewart SG 30 1-4 3-6 1 7 2 2 6

Abagail Merkle PG 24 4-10 0-0 3 8 2 3 8

Allison Riggle PG 20 1-5 0-0 1 1 1 2 2

Maliah Lewellen SG 19 2-2 0-3 0 2 0 4 5

Bella Grier PF 16 2-5 0-0 0 1 0 3 4

Ashley Brown C 8 0-1 0-0 0 1 0 1 0

Anzhelika Bure SG 2 0-1 0-0 0 1 0 0 0

Adalyn Matz SF 1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Leah Alexander PF 1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Turnovers: 16 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 2, J.Bing 5,

C.Stewart 2, M.Lewellen 2, B.Grier 1, A.Brown 1,

A.Bure 1)

Blocked Shots: 0

Steals: 4 (J.Bing 1, C.Stewart 2, M.Lewellen 1)

3P FGs: 3-11 (C.Harrington 1-2, J.Bing 0-1, C.Stewart

1-3, A.Merkle 0-1, A.Riggle 0-1, M.Lewellen 1-1,

B.Grier 0-1, A.Bure 0-1)

Oakland (17-2, 6-0)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Julia Mellon C 17 3-5 1-3 1 2 1 4 7

Selena James PF 30 0-0 4-4 1 9 1 2 4

Jacqueline Grover SF 30 3-11 0-0 1 2 0 2 7

Mckayla Musgrove SG 30 4-10 2-2 0 4 4 3 13

Luciana Overturf PG 27 2-6 3-4 0 3 3 2 8

Grace Dupuis PG 16 1-4 0-0 1 3 0 1 3

Angelica Brown SF 20 4-7 0-0 2 5 1 2 10

Stephanie Tittle PF 13 2-5 2-2 5 7 1 0 6

Nevaeh Chilton SG 5 0-1 0-0 0 0 1 0 0

Amirah Carmona C 6 1-1 2-3 0 0 0 0 4

Amelia Kimmel C 2 0-0 1-2 0 1 0 0 1

Addison Spinner SF 1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 1 0

Turnovers: 11 (J.Mellon 1, J.Grover 3, M.Musgrove 2,

L.Overturf 3, A.Brown 1, A.Spinner 1)

Blocked Shots: 2 (S.James 1, J.Grover 1)

Steals: 5 (J.Grover 1, M.Musgrove 1, L.Overturf 1,

A.Brown 1, A.Spinner 1)

3P FGs: 8-24 (J.Mellon 0-1, J.Grover 1-4, M.Musgrove

3-7, L.Overturf 1-4, G.Dupuis 1-3, A.Brown 2-4,

N.Chilton 0-1)

Player of Game: SG Mckayla Musgrove (OAK)

</pre><div></div>

We actually led by nine points in the first half at one point, 21-12. We were still high from our win against South Dakota State and felt that we could beat good teams. But then they went on a 17-2 run just like they were waking up from a bad dream. By halftime, we were down 29-24.

"Down five points against Oakland? On Oakland's home court? We can steal this one!" The goal was to keep them believing that they could kill the Golden Grizzlies.

Oakland took a 10-point lead early in the second but we battled to within three, 40-37 with 10:20 remaining. Then BOOM! another 15-1 run where they just took us apart. They led 55-40 with 4:27 left and it was just too late for another run in a very streaky game. We would only score four more points during the rest of the game.

Musgrave went 3-for-7 from 3-point range. We were absolutely horrible at the free throw line, 7-for-15. It was just that they could make the shots when it counted and get the momentum exactly when they needed to.

We had five days rest. Aaliyah Gray and her parents would come to visit us when we took on IPFW on Saturday. There was a lot of preparation that needed to take place, and not just on the court. Our 5-game win streak was over; it was time to move on.

(* * *)

On Tuesday, January 23rd undefeated Baylor came to Kansas and lost 75-68. Kansas was only up by four with 2:05 left but they managed to hang on in crunch time and deliver the knockout. I suspect that someone else will be number one next week. Maybe Ohio State? I suspect that #3 Stanford will vault to the #1 spot.

That same night, Towson came to #10 UNC Wilmington and beat them 56-53. A 3-pointer by Elise Cortez might have saved the Seahawks bacon and kept them undefeated but her miss - and the Towson rebound - gave the 7-10 Tigers a stunning upset. #7 Purdue - who beat visiting Michigan 91-83 - is the last undefeated team in women's basketball.

(* * *)

That weekend on Friday the 25th, the Gray family - Mr. and Mrs. Gray and their daughter Aaliyah - flew from Colorado to South Dakota for a 48-hour official visit. (I wondered how many parents were flying in with their kids under the new NCAA rules; it had to be a budget buster for some programs.) The roads were (reasonably) clear and a light snow had fallen the previous day to cover up the dirty snow from earlier in the week.

I met the Grays in my office for the first part of the visit. Before parents were allowed to visit with their siblings, the reason for starting the meeting in my office was to sort of intimidate the player. The Grays, however, were beyond intimidation so the meeting was more or less a review of what they'd experience with us. They'd tour the campus, speak with an academic advisor. Aaliyah would see a practice, the team would eat dinner together that night, and Gray would room with Catalina Stewart over the next couple of nights. (Undoubtedly, the team would take her to a party.)

There would be an "unofficial" pick-up game with our players on Saturday morning. The family would see the South Dakota-IPFW game on Saturday, another night for Aaliyah with the team, a breakfast with the team on Sunday and then departure.

One good thing - the Grays stated that they would not be eating with us beyond the first day. "We want Aaliyah to have a chance to see what the team is like without her feeling that we're breathing on her." I was glad. In the future, I'd have visits where the parents shadowed the kid virtually the entire trip.

(* * *)

January 26, 2013 - IPFW (8-11, 2-5) at South Dakota (7-12, 4-2)

It's definitely hard to prepare for a game when you have critical parents watching a practice. I don't know how much they could have learned - neither the parents or the recruit can step onto the boundary lines of the court. I managed to get through the session without swearing; I was getting better at that.

There was a three-way tie for second in the Summit League between UKMC, South Dakota and North Dakota State, all at 4-2. North Dakota State and UMKC would play each other so even if we won we'd still be tied. And I definitely wanted to be tied for second.

I felt that the Mastodons were a better team defensively than we were, but they paid for it by drawing over 20 fouls a game. They played a man defense so it would be a hands-on game. I'm sure they remembered losing to us last year; it was the only game we won last year against a team with a winning record.

Sophomore SG Emma Vallee led the team with 10.4 ppg but only shot 38.2 percent - she had to chuck a lot of shots up there to get those 10.4 points. We felt that if we could put the clamps on her early she'd start to take worse shots as the game progressed. Senior C Isabella Britton scored 8.3 ppg and 6.1 rpg. SG Aimee McIntyre's 1.6 steals per game led the Summit League.

We needed a win for three reasons - to wash out the taste of the Oakland loss, to keep hanging on to second place in the League...and to impress the Grays.

South Dakota 69, IPFW 61 (OT)

IPFW (8-12, 2-6)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Jaidyn Shanks C 36 1-6 1-2 0 3 2 2 3

Janiah Johnson PF 34 4-6 1-1 1 1 1 4 9

Aimee McIntyre SF 34 4-11 2-3 1 7 0 5 10

Isabella Britton SG 34 5-10 0-0 2 8 4 4 10

Emma Vallee PG 37 2-18 0-0 1 4 3 1 6

Kai Eady C 19 2-5 1-2 0 3 0 3 5

Gabriella Cardona SF 20 2-6 0-0 2 4 2 1 4

Pearl Siegel SG 11 4-4 0-0 0 0 0 1 10

Azul Shoffner PG 13 0-4 2-3 1 1 1 1 2

Emily Sellars PF 10 1-1 0-0 0 5 2 0 2

Lilly Thompson C 1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Turnovers: 13 (J.Shanks 2, J.Johnson 1, A.McIntyre 2,

I.Britton 2, E.Vallee 1, K.Eady 1, G.Cardona 1,

P.Siegel 2, E.Sellars 1)

Blocked Shots: 3 (J.Johnson 1, E.Vallee 1, K.Eady 1)

Steals: 3 (A.McIntyre 1, E.Vallee 1, E.Sellars 1)

3P FGs: 4-16 (E.Vallee 2-11, G.Cardona 0-1, P.Siegel

2-2, A.Shoffner 0-2)

South Dakota (8-12, 5-2)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Angelina Choe C 35 4-8 2-8 3 17 2 4 10

C. Harrington PF 33 2-5 2-2 1 11 2 2 6

Jessica Bing SF 38 1-12 2-4 2 8 2 1 4

Catalina Stewart SG 39 5-6 0-0 1 6 2 0 14

Abagail Merkle PG 33 4-10 2-2 3 4 0 1 10

Allison Riggle PG 22 0-4 3-5 0 3 3 0 3

Maliah Lewellen PF 23 4-6 0-0 0 2 1 0 8

Bella Grier SF 14 3-5 3-4 2 2 1 1 9

Ashley Brown C 11 1-1 3-3 1 1 1 1 5

Anzhelika Bure SG 1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Leah Alexander PF 1 0-1 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Analia Williams C 1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Turnovers: 20 (A.Choe 4, C.Harrington 5, J.Bing 2,

C.Stewart 4, A.Riggle 1, M.Lewellen 1, B.Grier 2,

A.Brown 1)

Blocked Shots: 1 (A.Choe 1)

Steals: 4 (C.Harrington 1, A.Merkle 1, M.Lewellen 2)

3P FGs: 4-13 (C.Harrington 0-1, J.Bing 0-3, C.Stewart

4-5, A.Riggle 0-2, M.Lewellen 0-1, L.Alexander 0-1)

Player of Game: SG Catalina Stewart (SD)

</pre><div></div>

If you want to impress a visitor, that's how you do it. A come from behind win. The Mastodons took a 7-0 lead from the opening tip-off and within 90 seconds I had to burn a timeout. Then IPFW went on an 11-2 run that put them up 22-16 with 4:00 left in the first. I had to tell everyone, "When another team goes on a run, you either slow it down or speed it up. The more they have to adjust to what you do, the more likely you are to break a run. Timing is everything. Offense is timing and defense is destroying your opponent's timing."

We managed to close to 22-19 but IPFW got hot near the end of the half and the score was 28-21 at halftime. I continued to impress on the team that we needed to control the pace. Furthermore, we seemed to be winning the battle of the boards; extra effort there might pay off.

We came out in the second with a 6-0 run to close to 28-27. The Mastodons could not get to anywhere past a couple of baskets ahead of us.

Ashley Brown hit a couple of free throws with 7:11 left to give us our first lead, 41-40, after a long dry spell from both teams. But with 4:37 remaining it was tied at 44-44. It stayed close and with 20 seconds left we led 48-44.

But with Aimee McIntrye trying a 3-pointer, Bella Grier made a dumb foul, so McIntyre went to the line for three. She hit two of them to close the score to 48-46 with 17 seconds left. Jessica Bing ended up with the ball and the Mastodons fouled her.

If she had hit both of those shots, we'd have had a clear win but she missed the second one. We were up 49-46 with 15 seconds left and Emma Vallee shot from the top of the key - nothing but net.

49-49. Overtime.

What was my message to my disheartened team. "We've got these guys right where we want them! Time to watch them melt!"

And I was right. We went on an 11-2 run and IPFW fell apart. I saw someone holding up a sign in the crowd:

I

Paid

For

What???

I chuckled. This time, no comeback and the Mastodons were dead. We outrebounded them 54-36, but I was prouder of the 10 team fouls. Catalina Stewart ran right into the stands after the game to say hello to Aaliyah Gray to give her the game ball, a nice gesture.

The stat I was proudest of? The 10 personal fouls over 45 minutes of play. IPFW only got 11 visits to the charity stripe; we got 28. "You played composed today. If you keep playing like this - we can reach any of our goals."

Catalina Stewart shot 5-for-6 to be named player of the game, but I thought it should have been Angelina Choe with 10 points and 17 rebounds. Her counterpart in the post, Jaidyn Shanks, was held to just 3 rebounds and 1-for-6 shooting.

(* * *)

Baylor got beaten by another Kansas team as they went to Kansas State and got thumped 86-76. Ohio State and Stanford were both winners.

UNC Wilmington went to VCU and got whalloped 75-44. The Seahawks would definitely take a tumble on Monday.

(* * *)

WBCA Top 10

# Team FPV Record Points Prv Conference

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Baylor (64) 19-2 1792 1 Big 12 Conference

2. Ohio State 18-1 1715 2 Big Ten Conference

3. Stanford (5) 17-1 1637 3 Pacific-12 Conference

4. Notre Dame (1) 16-1 1586 4 Big East Conference

5. Duke (2) 16-1 1501 6 Atlantic Coast Conference

6. Purdue 18-0 1441 7 Big Ten Conference

7. Connecticut 16-1 1366 9 Big East Conference

8. Florida State 15-2 1266 5 Atlantic Coast Conference

9. Maryland 16-2 1153 8 Atlantic Coast Conference

10. Southern California 16-2 1111 14 Pacific-12 Conference

</pre><div></div>

Baylor still #1? No one saw that coming. However, Baylor is no longer a unanimous number one. Connecticut climbs to seven in its march to women's basketball domination. Undefeated Purdue is at number six without a single first place vote. If the polls extended beyond #25 it would put Oakland at #26.

(* * *)

There was one person, however, that was destroying my attempt to remain calm and controlled in all things, and that was Isabella Crumley. I asked Caitlyn Williams the next day, "Has Isabella made up her mind one way or another?"

"No, Mark."

"Has she even hinted that she's going to make her mind up one way or another?"

"No."

I sighed. "All right. Given the fact that the players aren't that enthusiastic about her - we're going to deadline her."

Deadlining a player was exactly what it meant. You simply tell the player, "if you don't sign with us by X, we can no longer recruit you."

"Well, what am I supposed to tell her?"

"Exactly the way we feel. We don't believe that she's going to sign with us. Therefore, it's up to prove that she will sign with us. And if she doesn't sign with us by February 3rd, we're moving on. If she signs before February 3rd, we give her a scholarship; else we move on."

Caitlyn was silent. "Well, then who are we going to recruit?"

I looked her right in the eye. "That's for you to figure out." It was time for some more hands-on management.

(* * *)

January 29, 2013 - South Dakota (8-12, 5-2) at Nebraska-Omaha (8-11, 3-4)

2012-13 Summit League Standings

TEAM CW CL Pct W L Pct RPI Prestige

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oakland Golden Grizzlies 7 0 1.000 18 2 .900 45 44

South Dakota Coyotes 5 2 .714 8 12 .400 117 6

North Dakota State Bison 5 2 .714 9 11 .450 169 31

UMKC Kangaroos 4 3 .571 9 11 .450 177 16

South Dakota State Jackrabbits 4 3 .571 10 9 .526 161 60

Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks 3 4 .429 8 11 .421 204 5

IPFW Mastodons 2 6 .250 8 12 .400 250 28

IUPUI Jaguars 1 6 .143 3 16 .158 164 7

Western Illinois Fighting Leathernecks 1 6 .143 3 17 .150 330 10

</pre><div></div>

With the cold weather in South Dakota - it had remained in the teens and twenties all week, surprisingly mild - it was good to head to Nebraska and (marginally) less arctic weather. Our game with UNO would end the first cycle of games in the Summit League and a 6-2 finish in the first eight league games would be a mark of pride.

The Mavericks only scored 49.0 points per game but had won their last three games - granted those games were against IUPUI, IPFW and Western Illinois but we knew they'd come into this game confident. (They had even beaten 5-13 Arkansas!) However, their margin of victory was only -7.5 points, not far behind our margin of -5.8 points. We were pretty much ahead of them in most metrics but not enough to satisfy me.

They had a couple of good players. Even though they had no player breaking double digits in scoring, senior C Kylie Davis averaged 6.4 ppg and 6.7 rpg. Freshman point guard Amya Weiss was making a name for herself with 8.8 points per game, but her A/TO ratio of 0.59 wasn't impressive. She could however down the three, going 16-for-45 (35.6 percent) from behind the line.

They liked to switch between the 2-3 and 3-2 zones. We spent practices talking about how the Mavericks switched out of the zone and formed the trap, and which players would slide to the free throw line. "If you can anticipate them, you can beat them." The only question was whether or not they would switch things up. Even so, this was much more an Xs-and-Os practice - I need to know the team's ability to retain new information, particularly when it might mean the difference between winning and losing.

South Dakota 46, Nebraska-Omaha 40

South Dakota (9-12, 6-2)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Angelina Choe C 30 0-3 1-2 4 14 1 1 1

C. Harrington PF 28 3-6 5-7 2 6 1 2 11

Jessica Bing SF 12 3-3 0-2 0 1 0 4 6

Catalina Stewart SF 33 1-10 2-2 2 2 1 2 4

Abagail Merkle PG 27 4-11 0-0 3 4 2 1 8

Allison Riggle PG 24 2-6 0-1 2 3 1 1 4

Maliah Lewellen PF 20 2-6 0-1 3 3 1 2 4

Bella Grier PF 15 1-3 2-5 2 5 1 0 4

Ashley Brown C 7 1-1 0-0 2 4 0 2 2

Anzhelika Bure SG 2 1-4 0-1 1 1 0 0 2

Jillian Ho PG 1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Turnovers: 11 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 2, C.Stewart 2,

A.Merkle 2, A.Riggle 2, A.Brown 1)

Blocked Shots: 1 (A.Choe 1)

Steals: 8 (A.Choe 1, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 1, A.Merkle

2, B.Grier 1, A.Bure 2)

3P FGs: 0-15 (C.Harrington 0-2, C.Stewart 0-4, A.Merkle

0-1, A.Riggle 0-4, M.Lewellen 0-1, B.Grier 0-1, A.Bure

0-2)

Nebraska-Omaha (8-12, 3-5)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Player Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts

Kylie Davis C 23 5-8 3-3 2 7 1 5 13

Chanel Stevens PF 29 2-4 0-2 2 5 1 5 4

Dulce Diaz SF 26 2-8 0-2 0 9 2 2 6

Janelle Ainsworth SG 34 2-8 2-3 1 1 2 2 6

Amya Weiss PG 33 2-4 2-2 0 2 0 4 7

Brianna Padilla SF 20 1-3 0-0 1 4 0 2 2

Halle McCully C 20 1-4 0-0 1 1 1 1 2

Sophia Schaaf SG 2 0-0 0-0 0 0 1 0 0

Cecilia Reilly C 10 0-2 0-0 0 0 0 1 0

Khloe Hopkins PF 2 0-1 0-0 0 0 0 0 0

Turnovers: 18 (K.Davis 3, C.Stevens 3, D.Diaz 3,

J.Ainsworth 3, A.Weiss 2, B.Padilla 2, C.Reilly 2)

Blocked Shots: 0

Steals: 1 (J.Ainsworth 1)

3P FGs: 3-15 (D.Diaz 2-4, J.Ainsworth 0-4, A.Weiss 1-3,

B.Padilla 0-2, H.McCully 0-1, K.Hopkins 0-1)

Player of Game: PF Caroline Harrington (SD)

</pre><div></div>

(* * *)

What can you say? They adapted and they came back from behind. The team is showing that it can work its way through adversity. We were down 22-9 with 3:45 left - and then suddenly, the team figured it out. We went on an 11-2 run and almost tied it at halftime, down 22-20.

Jessica Bing almost got herself thrown out of the game arguing a call. She got a technical in the first half, and UNO got four free throws in a row. They went 0-for-4 at the line. (They'd finish the night 7-for-12.) As for our run, we basically earned those 11 free throws on foul shots.

As you can guess, it was a sloppy game. They shot 35.7 percent and we shot 34.0 percent. But we crushed them on the boards, 43-29 for the game.

It was a tough second half. We only led by a couple of baskets for most of the game with our biggest lead 45-33 with 3:16 left. At no time did I feel that we were really in contro1 even with a 12-point lead. The Mavericks closed to 45-40 on a 3-pointer by Dulce Diaz with 1:27 left and we were back in a game again.

I called a time out telling the team that if they shot, they'd shoot from outside. But we had shot less than 50 percent from the free throw line so UNO's strategy was to send us to the free throw line and hope we choked. We only hit one of our following free throws but they couldn't get another basket.

Game over. "This win happened for a reason," I told them. "Things happen for reasons. This 6-2 record in the Summit League isn't an accident. You did that. You worked your asses off to achieve it. Great job. Now UMKC is going to come to Vermillion in February - and it's time to take care of some unfinished business."

(* * *)

On the 30th, Penn State came to undefeated #6 Purdue and beat them 65-57 in Big Ten action. PF Marie Pollet elevated the Lady Lions single-handedly to the victory. There are now no more undefeated teams in women's basketball.

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

2012 Summit League Standings

TEAM CW CL Pct W L Pct RPI Prestige

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oakland Golden Grizzlies 7 0 1.000 18 2 .900 50 44

South Dakota Coyotes 6 2 .750 9 12 .429 108 6

North Dakota State Bison 5 2 .714 9 11 .450 169 31

UMKC Kangaroos 4 3 .571 9 11 .450 181 16

South Dakota State Jackrabbits 4 3 .571 10 9 .526 158 60

Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks 3 5 .375 8 12 .400 230 5

IPFW Mastodons 2 6 .250 8 12 .400 250 28

IUPUI Jaguars 1 6 .143 3 16 .158 167 7

Western Illinois Fighting Leathernecks 1 6 .143 3 17 .150 328 10

</pre><div></div>

Second place in the Summit League, believe it or don't! I'm just as surprised as you are. I hoped we'd finish at 8-8 so I could keep my job maybe another two-three years but I didn't think it would happen so fast.

Up next: What decision will Isabella Crawley make? South Dakota takes on UMKC, Western Illinois, North Dakota State and IUPUI as the Yotes go deeper into the schedule.

masterofnone · February 2, 2012

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="32372" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>"But I've followed women's ball for years. South Dakota State? Yeah, I've heard of it. South Dakota? Uh-uh. Not on the map." - Mr. Gray</div></blockquote> "Okay, Mr. Has Followed Women's Ball For Years, look at the conference standings. See where we are? See where they are? So apparently you don't follow it very closely." Seriously though, another good read and you get your team playing some good ball right now. I mean, RPI of 108, weren't you up at like 282 last year? Also, with 9 wins, that's already more than you had all of last season. Keep up the good work, and good luck on the road to the conference championship! (Although Oakland looks like they'll be mighty tough to beat this year. At 18-2, they oughta be near the Top 25?)

Petrel · February 9, 2012

masterofnone: Oakland is definitely highly-ranked. They're in the mid-major Top 10 and have been hanging around the bottom list of teams which are just below #25, the ones that get a handful of votes every week in the national polls.

February 2013

With the deadline for Isabella Crumley to decide on South Dakota approaching, Caityln Williams would be taking the day off on the 1st to shore up the forces. She was taking a visit to Madison Bozeman out of Darlington High School in Wisconsin. I didn't think much of Bozeman's 12.3 ppg/10.3 rpg against weak competition, but she could play average defense - which was better than a lot of our recruits. If Crumley said no to us, we'd be left to scramble.

In the meantime, we prepared for the upcoming match against UMKC. That day, February 2nd - I received a call on my cell phone and the number identified itself as belonging to Isabella Crumley. I had given her a deadline to either sign with South Dakota by Sunday, February 3rd or we were going to move forward with recruiting someone else.

"Coach," Isabella Crumley said, "I've decided to accept your offer of a scholarship."

Normally, I would have said, "Congratulations!" or "We're looking forward to having you!" But instead, all I could do was blurt out "It's about time!"

"Sorry!" Isabella said.

"But I am glad that you've made up your mind. Are you ready to fax your National Letter of Intent today?"

"Yes, Coach."

"Good. I'm heading right to my office and we're going to keep in touch with you. Now what was that number you wanted? Number five?"

"Yes, coach, if that's okay."

"It's more than okay. Welcome to the South Dakota Coyotes. I'll tell your team and I look forward to seeing you on campus this fall."

After months and months, we finally had someone signed! But that still left one power forward spot left to recruit. If I had to wait until April to get our next signing, there would be hell to pay. Aaliyah Gray was still a no-decision. Was it time to deadline her, too?

(* * *)

http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/7060/freeph.jpg

Chadsey's Crumley Signs to South Dakota

Isabella Crumley, a 6-7y post out of Chadsey High School, has signed a binding letter of intent with the University of South Dakota according to Coyote's coach Mark Hawkins. Crumley scored 13.5 ppg and 10.2 rpg for Chadsey in her final year with the Explorers.

Hawkins said "The signing of Isabella Crumley makes this a great recruiting year for us. She definitely fills a need for our team and can be a prolific inside scorer." Crumley was the top scorer for Chadsey over her final two seasons.

(* * *)

February 2, 2013 - South Dakota State (9-12, 6-2) at UMKC (10-11, 5-3)

We were hoping to revenge a 77-54 loss at home earlier in the year to the Kangaroos. It had been our worst Summit League game this year, even worse than the lost at Oakland.

Under Summit League play, PG Ava Batchelor was continuing to progress. In that nightmare game, she had 20 points, six assists and just one turnover against us. Three players from the Kangaroos scored in double-digits against us. I also figured we'd have to look out for senior SG Charley Hughes. She only scored 7.2 ppg but being a senior, she'd have a lot of drive to lead the team to a sweep of the Yotes. Our job was to keep that from happening.

The first thing I talked to the team about was the fact that Crumley had signed with us. They didn't seem too enthusiastic, but I thanked them for their help and for making her feel at home and helping the program.

I returned to the topic at hand. "We're on the road, and they've already beaten us. They will try to put us on the ropes right away. We're going to frustrate them." I told the team to make incidental contact as much as possible. "Bump 'em under the post." We worked on mirroring one of our sets just to force them to make a lot of petty adjustments. I wanted this rematch to be a mental game.

"You need to come into this game with an attitude that you've already won it. You have to execute under the basket. You have to put bodies on #33 (Batchelor). You make #33 adjust to our man, and if she gets hot, don't panic. Because I've seen you do great stuff. Keep doing great stuff, and let UMKC know that they didn't catch us on our best night in January, but they just got us on our best night when it counted."

UMKC 61, South Dakota 53

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    26   2-4   3-5   3   8   1  4   7
C. Harrington     PF   25   2-6   1-3   1   2   1  3   6
Jessica Bing      SF   33  4-12   0-2   3   7   4  2   8
Catalina Stewart  SG   33  8-15   0-0   1   4   0  2  18
Abagail Merkle    PG   28   2-3   0-0   1  10   2  3   4
Allison Riggle    PG   19   1-3   0-0   0   0   0  2   2
Maliah Lewellen   C    13   2-2   0-0   0   0   0  3   4
Bella Grier       PF   11   0-2   0-0   0   1   1  2   0
Ashley Brown      C     7   2-2   0-0   1   2   1  1   4
Anzhelika Bure    SG    2   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Leah Alexander    PF    3   0-0   0-0   1   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 17 (A.Choe 2, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 3, 
C.Stewart 6, A.Merkle 2, A.Riggle 1, B.Grier 2)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 5 (C.Stewart 2, A.Merkle 1, B.Grier 1, A.Brown 
1)
3P FGs: 3-15 (A.Choe 0-1, C.Harrington 1-4, J.Bing 0-2, 
C.Stewart 2-6, A.Riggle 0-1, B.Grier 0-1)

UMKCStats  (11-11, 6-3):
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Madison Bright    C    28  6-11   3-4   3   5   2  1  15
Sophie Gerl       PF   28   0-4   3-6   3   5   0  2   3
Abigail Kennedy   SF   28   3-6   0-2   2   6   4  2   7
Charley Hughes    PG   32   4-8   0-0   2   5   3  2   8
Ava Batchelor     PG   19   1-3   2-2   0   1   3  4   4
Madison Daniels   C    14   0-2   1-5   0   3   1  2   1
Mia Garnett       PF   12   1-3   0-0   0   1   0  1   2
Madison Reichert  SF   10   1-1   4-4   0   1   0  0   6
Rosemary Reynolds SG   26  5-10   4-5   0   3   2  2  15
Ryann Hunt        PG    3   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 7 (M.Bright 1, A.Kennedy 2, C.Hughes 2, 
A.Batchelor 1, M.Reichert 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 8 (M.Bright 1, S.Gerl 2, A.Kennedy 1, C.Hughes 
1, R.Reynolds 2, R.Hunt 1)
3P FGs: 2-13 (S.Gerl 0-1, A.Kennedy 1-3, C.Hughes 0-4, 
A.Batchelor 0-1, M.Daniels 0-2, R.Reynolds 1-2)

Player of Game: SG Rosemary Reynolds (UMKC)

Well, the good news is we stopped Batchelor. We held her to four points. The bad news is that we didn't stop anyone else. At least after the Kangaroos took an 8-0 lead we didn't melt down. We led 28-27 late in the first with one minute left and were only down by one at halftime, 29-28.

But UMKC really wanted this game and they played a great ball control offense. They only turned the ball over 7 times throught the game and turned the tables on us, trying to force us out of our rhythm. With 2:37 left, the score was tied at 51-51.

But we just couldn't hit anything after that. And Batchelor stepped up. They changed it up. We thought she'd shoot the ball, but in those last minutes, she did all the little things. A quick no look pass. A crucial rebound. Two free throws. She made up for those four points we held her to, and she managed to beat us anyway.

My hope was that come what may, we would not face UMKC in the post-season. At this moment in time, they were smarter than we were...and we only had till March 10th to smarten up.

(* * *)

Of course, there was other basketball going on. In a highly-anticipated match, #6 Purdue traveled to #2 Ohio State for a battle of Big Ten supremacy. Both teams had just one loss over the season. up by three at halftime, the Buckeyes made the second half all theirs as they rolled toward a 69-48 victory and held the Boilermakers to 28.8 percent shooting. Senior PG Aubrey Brooks led Ohio State with 16 points and seven rebounds. Junior SG Kira Griffin added another 16 points for Ohio State with the Buckeyes moving to first place in the Big Ten.

(* * *)

Sunday decided to bring a cold wave. Even though the thermometer only read 18 degrees, we were granted six more inches of snow. But if you thought South Dakota was having it bad, New York state was getting it worse. It was the second straight day of below-zero weather in Manhattan and the upper part of the state was buried. The governor called a state of emergency and the Hudson River was in danger of freezing over.

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/7743/frozenniagra.jpg

Niagara getting some of the worst of it.

We managed to fight our way back to classes on Monday, forced to lay over in Sioux Falls overnight due to the bad weather. Western Illinois was schedule to play on the 5th and I was wondering if they were going to make it.

(* * *)

WBCA Top 10

# Team FPV Record Points Prv Conference

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Baylor (67) 20-2 1795 1 Big 12 Conference

2. Ohio State (1) 20-1 1724 2 Big Ten Conference

3. Notre Dame (1) 18-1 1637 4 Big East Conference

4. Duke (2) 18-1 1543 5 Atlantic Coast Conference

5. Stanford (1) 18-2 1514 3 Pacific-12 Conference

6. Connecticut 18-1 1427 7 Big East Conference

7. Maryland 18-2 1292 9 Atlantic Coast Conference

8. Florida State 16-3 1223 8 Atlantic Coast Conference

9. Oklahoma 16-4 1211 22 Big 12 Conference

10. UCLA 17-3 1119 19 Pacific-12 Conference

Connecticut sneaking up to #6. Look at the jump the Sooners took! They've beaten their last three Big 12 opponents by 20-point margins. Looking forward to that Baylor-Oklahoma match on February 9th.

(* * *)

February 5, 2013 - Western Illinois (3-18, 1-7) at South Dakota (9-13, 6-3)

We hoped that we could sweep the hapless Fighting Leathernecks at the DakotaDome. A win would put us into double-digits in wins for the year and do wonders for us psychologically.

Right now, the best player on the Leathernecks was freshman PG Brianna Joyner, who was averaging 9.2 ppg (but turning the ball over 2.9 times for every 1.1 assists). Joyner was fourth in the league in TOs - but Catalina Stewart was #1. Junior SG Angelique Rutherford averaged almost a steal a game and chipped in with 8.3 points per game, and Western Illinois would undoubtedly assign Rutherford to guard Stewart when possible.

Aside from those occasional moments when their defense kicked in, they weren't that good. They lost games by an average of 16.9 ppg and were outrebounded by a 10-rebound margin each game. Two of their only three wins came by six points or less.

I knew what they'd be working on - shooting (they only shot 30 percent in the last game against us) and on getting their bench players involved (only six bench points in a 54-40 loss).

So we did something a little different - we focused on anything we could pick up from their bench, wishing to keep Western Illnois flat and force them into deep minutes with their starters. We felt we had the stamina to beat Western Illinois, particularly at home - but Western Illinois was fighting to keep its head above water. A loss would mean they could finish no better than .500 in the conference. I wanted to scream at my players when they did dumb crap, but I was holding fast to what Coach Tomlinson told me - "keep your cool".

South Dakota 58, Western Illinois 48

Western Illinois (3-19, 1-8)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Haleigh Tessier   C    26   0-4   0-2   0   0   0  4   0
Yareli Morgan     PF   22   2-4   0-0   1   5   0  3   4
Carmen Pittman    SF   23   3-7   1-2   0   4   0  2   8
A. Rutherford     SG   26   2-7   0-0   4   8   0  1   4
Brianna Joyner    PG   32   1-9   5-6   1   2   2  2   7
Eden Bittner      SG   25   3-7   1-1   1   2   0  1   7
Ali Elliott       SF   16   1-2   4-4   2   6   0  2   7
Brynn Tyler       C    16   0-1   6-8   0   2   0  2   6
Chloe Martinez    PF    8   0-0   2-2   1   2   0  0   2
Mylee Mead        C     1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Amaya Mackay      PG    5   0-1   3-4   0   0   0  1   3

Turnovers: 16 (H.Tessier 1, Y.Morgan 5, C.Pittman 1, 
A.Rutherford 4, B.Joyner 1, E.Bittner 1, A.Elliott 2, 
B.Tyler 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 4 (Y.Morgan 1, A.Rutherford 1, E.Bittner 1, 
A.Mackay 1)
3P FGs: 2-12 (Y.Morgan 0-1, C.Pittman 1-3, A.Rutherford 
0-3, B.Joyner 0-3, E.Bittner 0-1, A.Elliott 1-1)

South Dakota (10-13, 7-3)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    28   4-7   0-1   5  11   2  2   8
C. Harrington     PF   19   2-7   0-0   1   3   0  5   4
Jessica Bing      SF   29   2-6   0-0   5   6   0  2   4
Catalina Stewart  SG   32   1-6   1-4   2   5   2  2   3
Abagail Merkle    PG   27  6-12   6-7   1   3   3  2  18
Allison Riggle    PG   22   3-8   1-2   0   2   1  3   7
Maliah Lewellen   PF   20   3-5   0-2   1   4   0  2   6
Bella Grier       PF   15   1-3   1-2   1   4   1  0   3
Ashley Brown      PF    6   1-2   1-1   1   2   0  3   3
Anzhelika Bure    SG    3   0-0   2-2   0   0   0  0   2
Leah Alexander    PF    1   0-0   0-0   0   1   0  0   0

Turnovers: 13 (C.Harrington 3, J.Bing 2, C.Stewart 3, 
A.Riggle 2, B.Grier 2, A.Bure 1)
Blocked Shots: 3 (A.Choe 1, C.Stewart 1, A.Riggle 1)
Steals: 6 (C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 1, C.Stewart 1, 
M.Lewellen 1, B.Grier 2)
3P FGs: 0-7 (A.Choe 0-1, J.Bing 0-1, C.Stewart 0-2, 
A.Merkle 0-2, A.Riggle 0-1)

Player of Game: PG Abagail Merkle (SD)

The bad news is that we went off-script. The Western Illinois bench scored more points (25) than the starters (23)! The good news is that we won anyway because the Fighting Leathernecks stunk up the joint, shooting 28.6 percent from the floor.

It's amazing. We're actually good enough now that we can win bad games even when we don't play well. (Either that or Western Illinois is, well, horrible. I expect the latter theory is true.)

Catalina Stewart went 1-for-6, with only 3 points and 3 turnovers. This is what you get when a freshman is a big part of your offense. It's a good thing that Abagail Merkle stepped in from the point guard role and scored 18 points. Angelina Choe added 11 rebounds to our total, grabbing one out of every four Yote boards.

So how did I treat this? I told them the truth. I was happy about the win but disappointed about their performance. It was like the post-game loss speech, but instead of getting angry just getting - calm about allowing a team like Western Illinois to score 48.

"Even so," I said. "We now have 10 wins on the season. We're back in second place. We just need one more conference win and not only will we finish .500 but we'll be going to the post-season. There's a lot more to do, but I'm starting to believe that you guys can carry the hammer."

(* * *)

With Isabella Crumley under wraps, we were still waiting on Aaliyah Gray to send us a Valentine for February. She was still talking to us and Gray told me that she'd be making her decision soon. "I sure hope so," I said. "We'd love to have you here." (And, to be truthful, I was this close to deadlining her.)

We struggled with a cold snap where it got down into the single digits in Vermillion. This gave the coaches a lot of chances for gab. We decided that we'd better start spreading our chips around the recruiting table and hedge our bet. It was decided that Caitlyn Williams would be flying/driving to the small town of Goreville, Illinois to talk to the parents of Aubrey Lewis out of Goreville High School. Liberty and Southern Illinois had been talking to Lewis and I wanted to make sure she didn't forget us.

In the meantime, we'd be traveling north to the big city of Fargo, North Dakota to take on North Dakota State

(* * *)

February 9, 2013 - South Dakota (10-13, 7-3) at North Dakota State (10-13, 6-4)

2012-13 Summit League Standings

TEAM                                      CW  CL    Pct   W   L   Pct  RPI  Prestige
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oakland Golden Grizzlies                  10   0  1.000  21   2  .913   67        44
South Dakota Coyotes                       7   3   .700  10  13  .435  130         6
South Dakota State Jackrabbits             7   3   .700  13   9  .591  138        60
North Dakota State Bison                   6   4   .600  10  13  .435  164        31
UMKC Kangaroos                             6   4   .600  11  12  .478  159        16
Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks                   3   6   .333   8  14  .364  247         5
IPFW Mastodons                             3   7   .300  10  13  .435  239        28
Western Illinois Fighting Leathernecks     1   8   .111   3  19  .136  329        10
IUPUI Jaguars                              1   9   .100   3  19  .136  223         7

A tale of two teams. Both with the same record, both jockeying for position in the league. As you can see, the #2 through #5 teams are all separated by one game.

We delivered them a decisive 68-48 loss at the DakotaDome a month ago and I knew they'd want to return the favor. Sophomore PG Saige Christie and senior SF Haylee Mull were still the one-two punch of the bison, with 14.5 ppg and 13.2 ppg respectively. Senior C Claire Ramirez was still a force on the boards as always with 8.2 rpg. (PF Addison Wood had a stress fracture and probably wouldn't be seen again until the tournament.) We moved the ball better but also turned it over more; they were the better defensive team.

We needed to stop Mull and Christie as well as we did in the previous matchup. Our focus was on when to abandon the man-to-man and recognize the need to double team; we'd try to keep Mull and Christie as the focus of those double-teams. The other goal was to help Catalina Stewart along and work with her on her passing game; I worked with her both on shooting and passing as well as trying to help Abigail Merkle work with her point guard role. "I need great games out of both of you; this part of the year is when it's the toughest."

"Everyone's tired right now," I said. "I'm still recruiting. We've still got over a month of basketball. North Dakota State is tired. So this is the barrier, and the goal to a Summit League championship is just busting through that barrier, just ignoring fatigue.

We would try something different. We called it "ice towels" after something I heard a high school boy's team in South Dakota do. They weren't used much in basketball, but they were supposed to help fight fatigue. So our goal was to have one of our managers there ahead of the team to get ice.

All the ice she could possibly get her hands on.

North Dakota State 60, South Dakota 47

South Dakota (10-14, 7-4)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    29   2-6   0-1   2  10   0  0   4
C. Harrington     PF   23   1-6   5-6   0   1   1  5   8
Jessica Bing      SF   29  5-13   3-5   4   6   0  2  13
Catalina Stewart  SG   33  4-10   0-0   1   6   3  3   9
Abagail Merkle    PG   28   1-7   2-2   3   5   0  0   4
Allison Riggle    PG   15   0-1   2-3   1   2   2  2   2
Maliah Lewellen   PF   19   1-2   1-2   0   3   3  0   3
Bella Grier       PF   14   1-2   2-2   0   2   1  1   4
Ashley Brown      C     5   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    4   0-3   0-0   0   1   0  1   0
Adalyn Matz       SF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 10 (A.Choe 1, C.Harrington 2, J.Bing 1, 
C.Stewart 5, A.Merkle 1)
Blocked Shots: 1 (A.Merkle 1)
Steals: 1 (C.Stewart 1)
3P FGs: 2-15 (A.Choe 0-1, C.Harrington 1-4, J.Bing 0-1, 
C.Stewart 1-5, A.Merkle 0-3, A.Bure 0-1)

North Dakota State (11-13, 7-4)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Claire Ramirez    C    27   3-8   0-0   4  10   1  2   6
Anahi Vestal      PF   28   0-1   0-0   0   1   1  1   0
Haylee Mull       SF   32  3-11   5-6   2  10   2  2  14
Mariam Rapp       SG   27   6-7   0-2   0   3   2  3  14
Saige Christie    PG   35  5-14   0-0   0   4   4  1  12
Erica Rochelle    SF   19   1-2   4-4   1   4   0  4   7
Abigail Borst     SG   13   1-5   0-0   1   3   0  2   2
Addison Kushner   SF    9   0-2   2-2   0   1   0  2   2
Kadence Lao       PF    4   1-1   0-0   0   2   0  0   3
Addison Taylor    SF    3   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Jocelyn Finlay    C     3   0-1   0-0   0   0   1  0   0

Turnovers: 7 (H.Mull 1, M.Rapp 2, S.Christie 1, 
E.Rochelle 1, A.Borst 1, K.Lao 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 4 (M.Rapp 3, S.Christie 1)
3P FGs: 9-22 (C.Ramirez 0-1, H.Mull 3-7, M.Rapp 2-3, 
S.Christie 2-5, E.Rochelle 1-1, A.Borst 0-4, K.Lao 1-1)

Player of Game: SG Mariam Rapp (NDSU)

I was now worried that we were in a slump. We were 3-3 in our last six games and playing .500 ball. Either that, or we had fallen back to our natural level and the six straight wins we had early this year were just a fluke. I didn't know what to do.

They never gave up the lead and just kept building it. They were up by double-digits before the first half was over and led 34-13 at one point in the first half. Even though they shot only 38 percent, our 30 percent shooting was disastrous - they had us locked up from the word "go". They even outrebounded us, 38-36.

They stopped us all. Jessica Bing had 13 points and 6 rebounds and Angelina Choe had 4 points and 10 rebounds, but Catalina Stewart had 9 points, 6 rebounds (and 5 turnovers) and Abagail Merkle was 1-for-7 shooting. They killed us from the perimeter, hitting 9 out of 22 3-point attempts.

You can imagine how fun that halftime was, with me trying not to blow a cork with sheer rage. I robotically tried to emphasize that we were still the kind of team that could beat NDSU despite being down by 14, but it didn't seem to take. I had no faith in the team in the second because they didn't look like they had faith in themselves.

Maybe it was the ice towels. Maybe that freaked them out. Although I would hear word that they certainly felt less fatigued, they definitely didn't play like it. I needed to talk to Ken Tomlinson again.

(* * *)

Bad day for Top Ten teams. #10 UCLA lost at home to their hated arch-rivals, #12 USC by a score of 82-75. #3 Notre Dame was upset at home as Marquette rolled in and beat the defending National Champions 66-60 for Notre Dame's second-only loss of the year.

But the big matchup was #9 Oklahoma going to play #1 Baylor. They had beaten Oklahoma 77-53 on the road, and it was time for the Sooners to return the favor with a 79-53 whipping in Waco. The 11-4 lead by the Lady Bears didn't hold up as the Sooners led 36-27 at halftime. Baylor was never really in it the second half. Two Oklahoma players broke the 20-point barriers, junior SF Lorelai Kubiak with 23 points and sophomore PG Sophia Wakefield with 22. The Lady Bears were out-rebounded 45 to 30 and three players finished with 10 rebounds, including Kubiak.

The Lady Bears are 2-3 in their last five games. There's no way they should hold on to the #1 ranking next week...am I right?

(* * *)

WBCA Top 10

   #  Team                      FPV  Record  Points  Prv  Conference                          
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1.  Ohio State               (62)    22-1    1790    2  Big Ten Conference                  
  2.  Baylor                    (1)    21-3    1709    1  Big 12 Conference                   
  3.  Duke                      (2)    20-1    1605    4  Atlantic Coast Conference           
  4.  Stanford                  (3)    20-2    1575    5  Pacific-12 Conference               
  5.  Notre Dame                       19-2    1497    3  Big East Conference                 
  6.  Connecticut               (4)    20-1    1475    6  Big East Conference                 
  7.  Maryland                         20-2    1318    7  Atlantic Coast Conference           
  8.  Oklahoma                         18-4    1296    9  Big 12 Conference                   
  9.  Florida State                    18-3    1272    8  Atlantic Coast Conference           
 10.  Arkansas-Little Rock             22-1    1028   13  Sun Belt Conference

Yep, I'm right.

(* * *)

The next big game of Top Ten teams was that Wednesday, with #7 Maryland traveling to #9 Florida State in an ACC battle. It was a fantastic game, with Maryland trying to hold off the Seminoles all the way throughout. Florida State led 61-60 briefly with 2:25 to go but the Terrapins held in there. Florida State tried to get a 3-pointer to break Maryland's momentum but it wouldn't fall, and Florida State was already over the foul mark putting Maryland in the bonus. With eight seconds left and Maryland up 68-65 and with the ball, freshman PF Sophia Langan stole the ball but was forced to make a long three - and she hadn't attempted one all year. The shot was nowhere near the basket and Maryland walked away with the win.

(* * *)

We were heading into a game with IUPUI on Valentine's Day. Most likely, we'd win the game; the Jaguars were 3-20 overall and just 1-10 in the conference. But I was still a simmering pot. We had heard nothing but platitudes from Aaliyah Gray about how great South Dakota was. The team looked like it was sinking down into the middle, and I thought my laid-back attitude - an attitude that came about as easiy to me as wearing a yoke - was part of it.

So I called Ken Tomlinson, my old college coach. He said that he had been following the Yotes - "not on TV, of course" - and that he had been paying close attention. "Taking my advice, Mark?"

"Yeah, and it doesn't go down soft. I've held off on screaming at anyone or strangling anyone and the team seemed to take to it really well. But now, they just seem punchy. I'm wondering if they're in a slump." I explained my concerns to him and the things that I've seen.

"Well, Mark, I used to have an old coach who gave me some good advice. Never jump to conclusions. You don't fix a car's engine by saying, "I guess this is wrong" and grabbing a hammer and banging around randomly. This can still be a problem you as a coach have a chance of fixing hands-on."

"How so?"

"You have to check out the fundamentals and see if your team is doing the things you ask it to. Then, worry about the things that you can't see."

"I think our limited number of sets is starting to hurt us. North Dakota State saw all the same crap we beat them with last time and they feasted on us."

"Don't worry about that. Yes, maybe your offense is just too simple for smart teams, but if your team can't execute that offense properly it's not going to matter anyway. You fix your offense and you fix your defense if they need fixing. Watch everything. Make sure that they're executing plays the way you want to see them, not in some sort of half-assed way that's close enough for government work. A good team can exploit an opponent that executes poorly, where help-side defense is slow or when a shooter is out of position. That's Basketball 102, taking advantage of those minor flaws. Fix your flaws."

"What if there are no flaws? Or none that I can see? Should I start demanding more?"

"Maybe. Maybe. But if the team is really doing what you want it to and still can't win, you have to see what's going on behind the scenes. There's a difference between being a competent team and being a brilliant team. Something is holding your team back - your job is to make sure that that something is not you. You haven't given them a tongue lashing, have you?"

"Nope."

"Good. Keep your mouth shut and your nose clean, keep teaching, listen to people who know what to do - like me - and you'll be a great coach."

(* * *)

February 14, 2013 - IUPUI (3-20, 1-10) at South Dakota (10-14, 7-4)

A win gets us at .500 for the season in conference play. Willie Burbank had asked me at the beginning of the year to get the Yotes to that level; we might be there after tonight.

The Jags have certainly struggled. The only in-conference team they've beaten is 4-20 Western Illinois. Their best player is a freshman shooting guard, Emily Nguyen who averaged 9.2 ppg and 5.0 prg. Everyone else is hopeless. (Sophomore SF Luna Cusick averages 3.3 TO/game and is a hopeless rebounder.) IUPUI is at the bottom of the league of virtually every major category.

For most of this week, I didn't talk. I watched. I took notes. I looked at old film and tried to find any flaws in our basic execution, any hitches. I needed to know if the team listened, if it could execute on demand, how well they adjusted to new demands. This game would be as good as any to find that out.

South Dakota 68, IUPUI 36

IUPUI (3-21, 1-11)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Brooke Garza      C    19   1-2   2-4   1   3   1  3   4
Olivia Ortiz      PF   25  4-12   1-1   3   6   0  0   9
Luna Cusick       SF   31   2-5   0-0   0   1   1  0   4
Emily Nguyen      SG   29  2-10   0-0   4   7   1  4   4
Addisyn Nolasco   PG   19   2-9   1-1   1   1   0  4   5
Armani Fontenot   PG   25   3-7   0-0   1   2   0  1   6
Zoe Brown         PF   18   0-2   0-0   0   1   0  0   0
Lucy Göttler      PF   14   0-1   1-2   0   3   0  1   1
Kloe Lucas        C     9   0-1   0-0   0   1   0  1   0
Cheyanne Levan    PF    7   0-2   0-0   1   3   0  2   0
Lindsay Moss      PG    3   1-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   3
J. Sadowski       SF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 11 (L.Cusick 3, E.Nguyen 2, A.Fontenot 1, 
Z.Brown 2, L.Göttler 1, K.Lucas 2)
Blocked Shots: 2 (E.Nguyen 1, A.Fontenot 1)
Steals: 4 (L.Cusick 1, E.Nguyen 2, L.Göttler 1)
3P FGs: 1-11 (L.Cusick 0-1, E.Nguyen 0-4, A.Nolasco 
0-3, A.Fontenot 0-2, L.Moss 1-1)


South Dakota (11-14, 8-4)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    26   3-4   0-3   4  11   2  1   6
C. Harrington     PF   26  7-11   4-4   0   2   0  2  21
Jessica Bing      SF   28   3-7   0-0   4   9   2  1   7
Catalina Stewart  SG   27  6-11   1-1   0   4   1  2  16
Abagail Merkle    PG   24   2-5   0-0   1   5   4  0   4
Allison Riggle    PG   20   2-4   1-2   1   1   5  0   6
Maliah Lewellen   PF   18   2-6   0-1   3   5   0  4   4
Bella Grier       SF   14   0-3   0-0   1   2   2  1   0
Ashley Brown      C     8   0-1   0-0   1   3   1  2   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    6   1-2   1-2   0   0   0  0   4
Adalyn Matz       SF    2   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 10 (C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 1, C.Stewart 1, 
A.Merkle 2, A.Riggle 1, M.Lewellen 2, A.Brown 2)
Blocked Shots: 1 (M.Lewellen 1)
Steals: 5 (J.Bing 1, C.Stewart 1, M.Lewellen 3)
3P FGs: 9-19 (C.Harrington 3-4, J.Bing 1-2, C.Stewart 
3-5, A.Riggle 1-2, M.Lewellen 0-2, B.Grier 0-2, A.Bure 
1-2)

Player of Game: PF Caroline Harrington (SD)

Well, clearly, there isn't much of a problem with the team on the court. Whatever's going on - if anything - must be mental.

There wasn't much to talk about in this game. We led by 20 at halftime, 37-17. We held the Jaguars to 28.8 percent shooting and 1-for-11 3-point shooting. (We hit 9 out of 19 of our attempts.) We had 17 assists, and IUPUI only had three.

Carolina Harrington had 21 points. Catalina Stewart had 16. (And only one turnover!) Angelina Choe had 6 points and 11 rebounds.

Saturday is a bye day. Our next game will be at South Dakota State, and we have Oakland coming up right after that. I'll be happy with 10-6 on the season; I'll start saving my real worries for tournament time.

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

At least recruiting is half-over. But will we get Aaliyah Gray or be left scrambling? In the second half of February (we'll post up to March 2nd) the season concludes with games against arch-rival South Dakota State (A), Oakland (H), IPFW (A) and Nebraska-Omaha (H).

Petrel · February 14, 2012

February 2013

We had Saturday the 16th off, but all other eight teams in the Summit League played, including a rematch between Oakland and South Dakota State. This time, the Jacks were triumphant, winning 66-58 on their own court. Oakland's undefeated streak in the Summit League had been broken - and we'd have to go to South Dakota State just five days later to try to do what the Golden Grizzlies could not.

(* * *)

WBCA Top 10

   #  Team                      FPV  Record  Points  Prv  Conference                          
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1.  Ohio State               (52)    23-2    1775    1  Big Ten Conference                  
  2.  Stanford                  (8)    22-2    1672    4  Pacific-12 Conference               
  3.  Connecticut               (8)    22-1    1642    6  Big East Conference                 
  4.  Notre Dame                (1)    21-2    1591    5  Big East Conference                 
  5.  Baylor                           22-4    1491    2  Big 12 Conference                   
  6.  Duke                      (3)    21-2    1451    3  Atlantic Coast Conference           
  7.  Maryland                         22-2    1360    7  Atlantic Coast Conference           
  8.  Oklahoma                         20-4    1347    8  Big 12 Conference                   
  9.  Florida State                    19-4    1178    9  Atlantic Coast Conference           
 10.  Tennessee                        20-4    1133   12  Southeastern Conference

Things return to normal with Connecticut leaping to #3 and Tennessee returning to the Top 10. The Huskies and #13 Arkansas-Little Rock are the only teams in the country with only one loss this year.

(* * *)

The following Monday, the 18th, Vermillion was hit with rainstorms. For the third day over the last four, the temperature was in the mid-30th. The rain was starting to wash away all of the dirty snow.

Caitlyn Williams came into my office with a troubled look on her face. "Mark, I've got some very bad news."

"Huh?"

"I just read on ESPN Rise that Aaliyah Gray has committed to the University of Montana."

"What? Didn't she call?"

"No call. I confirmed it on Montana's website. She's signed the NLI. She's not coming here."

I couldn't believe that she didn't call us. But it wasn't out of the ordinary. Some recruits signed with schools and left their other suitors to be notified by their parents, or a coach, or an e-mail message, or by a message left with a secretary. And some, like Aaliyah Gray, didn't bother calling at all.

"Did you try to call her?"

"I did. No answer. But then...I guess we're on her caller ID."

(* * *)

Aaliyah Gray's unannounced signing with Montana left us scrambling. We basically had six weeks to fill a roster spot.

"I don't intend to spend this April the way I spent last April. That's bullshit. Remember Leah Alexander and Adalyn Matz from last year? They've spent the season warming the bench and applauding, and that's no coincidence. When April comes around...you're begging. If I have to beg again...." I left the threat unspoken.

Everyone had all kinds of ideas, but no one could agree on the next person to recruit. "I want a name and I want a name by the end of the day," I told the other coaches. "I have work to do. I'm not going to hold anyone's hand on this!" I said and left the room.

One hour later, I made a call to Caitlyn's cell phone. "Do you have a name?"

"Yeah," she said. "Sarah Alex. Monterey High School in Lubbock, Texas. 6-7, 14.5 ppg and 7.9 rpg. Decent free throw shooter, average defender. The only other schools chasing her are Division II."

"No one from the Southland?"

"No one. Not much word on ESPN Rise about her."

"Okay," I said. "Call her, see if she's interested in coming to South Dakota."

(* * *)

Caitlyn Williams called. "We really had to talk Alex's family into it. They seemed to be very busy this week."

"Great," I said. "They do know we're offering a scholarship? Right?"

"Well, this is Sarah's senior year and she's still playing. Father is a long-distance truck driver, mother is a community college teacher. Both have commitments that are hard to break. But we finally settled on a day."

"When?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Holy Hell, Caitlyn!"

"You wanna wait till March, Mark? Tomorrow or nothing."

"Jesus. Fine. Tomorrow. But they better kiss my ass when I get there." I was getting tired of entitled kids real fast.

(* * *)

http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/9189/vfiles17098.jpg

The next day was like a lot of other days during recruiting season. Eaten alive with travel. Get on a plane in Sioux Falls, then a transfer in St. Louis to Lubbock, Texas. Rent a car and head to the Alex's.

Alex was the daughter of a white father and a Hispanic mother - 90 percent of Lubbock could call themselves either white or Hispanic. It was a big city which was the home of Texas Tech and it was blistering cold when we got there. I knew that if Sarah Alex came to USD she couldn't complain about the weather in South Dakota.

It was an easy visit - not the easiest in the world but I wish they were all that easy. Sarah seemed like a nice, hard-working girl. She had an older sister that had already graduated college. Her parents were apologetic ("I drove like a damned fool to get here when I found out!" her father gushed) and we had a pleasant meal together.

Alex was being recruited by Division II schools - but none had bit. "Sarah, how come no one's offered you a scholarship yet?"

"Coach says he thinks I turn the ball over too much," Sarah said. It was definitely a weakness, she averaged three turnovers a game.

"I though we were supposed to let the coach do that," Sarah's mother said in accented English.

"Well," Caitlyn said. "No. A lot of high school coaches are very busy, particularly during basketball season. Sometimes, they don't promote players and only a few coaches find out about them."

"Frankly, your GPA scared us a bit," I said to Sarah.

Sarah's father grumbled, "I told you should hit the books. Nothing but Cs."

"How are you doing this semester?" I asked.

"I'm...uh...pretty weak on history," Sarah said. "But I took my SATs. I got a 1020. Is that good enough to get into South Dakota?"

"Yes. So you want to sign?" I said.

"I want to see the campus first," Sarah said. Her parents nodded.

Whew. We can arrange that."

"Now hold on," her father said. "We'd want to come with her."

"It has to be soon," I said to her parents. "I'm not going to deadline your daughter. Right now, I'll say that she's #1 on my list. But if she can't make a decision soon, I am going to have to move on to the next person on my list. We're deep in the season and we want to recruit players eager to play with us."

"How much time can you give us?" Sarah's mother asked.

Caitlyn and I looked at each other. "Not much," I said. It was time for them to make the next move.

(* * *)

The next day, I was informed that Sarah Alex's parents would be coming up to Vermillion from February 22nd-24th - during our game against Oakland. It looks like they were interested. "My mom and dad were nervous wrecks," Sarah told me over the phone. "But they managed to take care of everything. We want to come up and see South Dakota."

(* * *)

February 21, 2013 - South Dakota (11-14, 8-4) at South Dakota State (16-9, 10-3)

2012-13 Summit League Standings

TEAM                                      CW  CL   Pct   W   L   Pct  RPI  Prestige
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oakland Golden Grizzlies                  11   1  .917  22   3  .880   57        44
South Dakota State Jackrabbits            10   3  .769  16   9  .640  131        60
UMKC Kangaroos                             9   4  .692  14  12  .538  157        16
South Dakota Coyotes                       8   4  .667  11  14  .440  145         6
North Dakota State Bison                   8   5  .615  12  14  .462  163        31
IPFW Mastodons                             4   9  .308  11  15  .423  268        28
Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks                   3   9  .250   8  17  .320  265         5
IUPUI Jaguars                              2  11  .154   4  22  .154  262         7
Western Illinois Fighting Leathernecks     2  11  .154   4  22  .154  335        10

As you can see, South Dakota was making its late-season push, and our hope was to travel upstate to Brookings and derail the train. If we managed to sweep the Jacks, it would drop them to 10 losses on the year (for the first time in I-don't-know-when) and it would be the first time we've swept SDSU since - well, forever.

We knew that their two seniors would want to go out with a bang. PF Cheyanne Hardiman scored 16.3 ppg and 6.5 rpg this year to lead the Summit League in scoring, and C Chelsea Norris would average 8.2 ppg and 12.2 rpg to lead the league in rebounding. (As well as lead the league in blocks with 2.6 per game.) But even with Hardiman and Norris one step out the door we'd have to worry about sophomore PG Susan Wisdom, who scored 11.4 ppg and 3.3 assists per game for South Dakota State.

As usual, SDSU led us in every statistical category. In one of our bright areas - only 16.7 PF/game, second in the Summit League - guess who was number one? Right, the hated Jacks with 15.7 ppg.

"I want you to remember that last game - we blew them right out of the DakotaDome. Big bad South Dakota State got thumped by 23 points. We are their second worst loss of the year. We beat them more than Oakland beat them. The point of this is that this is not a team of Wonder Womans. They are just as human as you are."

"Remember?" I asked, "when they got behind fast at home and they never caught up? If you can do the same thing, they just might fold again. But I really need all my reserves to step up tonight. Adalyn, you had five points in that game. Bella, you were 4-for-5. When everyone contributes, we win games."

"I'm not saying it's going to be easy. We can't finish any lower than fifth in the league. A 10-6 finish will guarantee us a weak first round opponent in the Summit League tournament. So we need two wins in our next four games, and this is one of the best places to get one."

"This is the greatest rivalry in the state. In January, you wrote an amazing chapter in that book. To our seniors, you might not have this opportunity again. Let's go out there, let's play for each other. If we give everything we've got, we're the better team. The Jacks don't have a chance. Because you'll remember these games for a long time. You showed you were worthy to be in the Summit League this year, now go out there and prove it to Brookings, South Dakota."

South Dakota State 73, South Dakota 52

South Dakota (11-15, 8-5)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    25   1-7   0-0   7   9   1  3   2
C. Harrington     PF   25  2-10   2-2   1   3   0  2   7
Jessica Bing      SF   30   3-5   0-0   0   0   3  2   6
Catalina Stewart  SG   27  3-13   0-0   1   2   1  1   8
Abagail Merkle    PG   25   2-8   4-4   1   2   1  1   8
Allison Riggle    PG   23   4-6   1-1   1   2   3  3   9
Maliah Lewellen   PF   17   2-2   0-0   0   0   0  0   5
Bella Grier       SF   15   2-3   1-2   0   3   1  0   5
Ashley Brown      C     8   1-2   0-0   0   0   0  3   2
Anzhelika Bure    SG    3   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Jillian Ho        PG    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Adalyn Matz       SF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Leah Alexander    PF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 7 (A.Choe 1, C.Stewart 1, A.Merkle 1, 
A.Riggle 2, B.Grier 1, A.Brown 1)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 4 (J.Bing 1, A.Riggle 2, B.Grier 1)
3P FGs: 4-15 (C.Harrington 1-3, C.Stewart 2-6, A.Merkle 
0-2, A.Riggle 0-1, M.Lewellen 1-1, A.Brown 0-1, A.Bure 
0-1)

South Dakota (17-9, 11-3)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Kayla Craft       C    28   2-5   0-0   1   6   0  1   4
Chelsea Norris    PF   34   3-5   2-2   4  14   2  1   8
Cheyanne Hardiman SF   33 11-17   3-8   6   8   2  0  25
Susan Wisdom      SG   27   6-9   2-4   2   3   6  2  15
M. Donaldson      PG   25   2-6   0-0   0   2   2  3   4
Casey Smith       PG   21   2-3   2-2   0   2   2  1   6
Jaliyah Weatherby SF   11   1-2   0-0   1   2   0  1   2
Charley Davis     SF    6   2-2   1-2   0   3   1  1   5
Annabel Archer    C     8   1-1   2-2   0   0   1  0   4
Chelsea Whiteley  SG    3   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  1   0
Natálie Jezek     PF    3   0-0   0-0   1   1   0  0   0
Emmalyn Rogers    PF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 10 (K.Craft 1, C.Hardiman 2, S.Wisdom 2, 
C.Smith 1, J.Weatherby 1, C.Davis 1, C.Whiteley 1, 
N.Jezek 1)
Blocked Shots: 8 (C.Norris 7, C.Hardiman 1)
Steals: 2 (C.Hardiman 1, M.Donaldson 1)
3P FGs: 1-4 (S.Wisdom 1-2, M.Donaldson 0-2)

Player of Game: PF Cheyanne Hardiman (SDST)

It was not to be. Everything we did right in the first game, we didn't do in the second - and everything the Jacks did wrong in the first, they got right in the second.

The thing is we let their top guns have big games in front of a raucous home crowd, at our expense. Cheyanne Hardiman dropped 25 points on us to the delight of the Jackrabbit crowd. Chelsea Norris almost had a double-double with eight points and 14 rebounds.

The lead by SDSU was initially small, but they began to build it up - they had a 20-6 run over the final eight minutes of the first half. and we had to fight from a 39-28 halftime deficit. The team looked both flat and frustrated. "You know what you need to do!" I shouted. "You take it to #22 (Hardiman)! If you've got to switch, then you switch! Goddammit, if you can't create on the floor, how are you going to win games in the postseason?"

But they were up by seventeen, 49-32 with 15 minutes left. I called a time out but it was hard to keep them focused, they couldn't block out the crowd noise. SDSU took another 14-4 run after the timeout and we were just choking on the Jacks' dust after that.

Norris had seven blocked shots. She was a monster in the post. We only shot 35.1 percent to 58.8 percent from SDSU. That wwas it. Game over.

After the game, I told the team that they couldn't let a crowd intimidate them. I told them that they were forbidden to listen to iPods or headphones on the bus ride back. "I swear, I'll throw it right out the bus window. Don't expect me to have any sympathy for you in losing this game."

South Dakota State would have to swoon for us to have a shot at second place in the Summit. And our next opponent was going to be Oakland, and we were hosting Sarah Alex and her parents. There was just not enough time in the day to do any soul searching.

February 23, 2013 - Oakland (23-3, 12-1) at South Dakota (8-5, 11-15)

The weather had been very warm - warm for South Dakota anyways. For the second straight day, the weather had hit 40 degrees and for most of the week the weather had been above the freezing point. The big piles of dirty snow were starting to noticeably shrink.

I was glad because this was the week that Sarah Alex and her parents had agreed to take a visit. "All of the schools that I've been talking to are local," Sarah said, referring to DII and DIII schools in Texas. "I think this is one of the biggest trips I've ever taken."

"Well, once you get a taste of South Dakota," I said, "it might be hard getting you back to Texas."

I got the impression that the family was very impressed with USD. Everything about their campus tour and their dinner went well. Sarah Alex seemed to get along with the team, and in the brief pick-up game that morning - the team had to play Oakland that same night - their assessment was that Sarah Alex could definitely play ball with them and get along with the team. (Although I wondered how much of that was Sarah Alex's personality.)

Unfortunately, the Alexes couldn't be a part of team preparation. They could have no more access than any visitor. They could watch us practice but they couldn't take part in one.

The Oakland practice would focus on fundamentals, because Oakland was one of the better teams in the country. "Remember what happened in our last game?" I said. "When they would go on a 15 point run and we'd get impatient? But we played them well in the first half of that game and we need to play them well for an entire game if we're going to have a chance to beat them."

With Sarah Alex and her family around, I knew they were distracted. Oakland hadn't stopped being the dominating team it always was. Senior SG McKayla Musgrove and junior SF Jacqueline Grover were still the offensive machines they always were, averaging 15.3 and 10.4 ppg, respectively. Junior PF Selena Game was averaging 6.2 rpg. After years of investment, Oakland had a class of upperclassmen that they could count on to bring home the money every night on the court. You saw it in the game film; this was a team that felt very comfortable with each other on the court. We still weren't at that stage yet.

Oakland 68, South Dakota 55

Oakland (24-3, 13-1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Julia Mellon      C    27   1-1   2-2   4   4   0  3   4
Selena James      PF   21   0-6   0-0   2   3   0  4   0
Jacqueline Grover SF   32  6-15   4-4   2  11   2  2  18
Mckayla Musgrove  SG   26  5-12   0-0   4   7   4  4  14
Luciana Overturf  PG   30   4-6   3-6   1   1   2  3  13
Grace Dupuis      PG   14   2-3   0-0   0   1   1  1   5
Angelica Brown    SF   19   1-5   0-0   1   1   1  2   2
Stephanie Tittle  PF   12   0-2   0-0   1   5   1  0   0
Nevaeh Chilton    SG    6   2-3   0-0   0   1   2  2   5
Amirah Carmona    C    10   3-4   1-2   1   4   0  1   7
Amelia Kimmel     PF    3   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  2   0

Turnovers: 15 (J.Mellon 1, J.Grover 3, M.Musgrove 6, 
G.Dupuis 2, N.Chilton 1, A.Carmona 1, A.Kimmel 1)
Blocked Shots: 4 (J.Grover 1, N.Chilton 1, A.Carmona 2)
Steals: 7 (J.Grover 5, M.Musgrove 1, L.Overturf 1)
3P FGs: 10-25 (S.James 0-3, J.Grover 2-4, M.Musgrove 
4-8, L.Overturf 2-4, G.Dupuis 1-1, A.Brown 0-3, 
N.Chilton 1-2)

South Dakota (11-16, 8-6)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    28   1-1   2-2   1   4   1  1   4
C. Harrington     PF   26   2-5   5-6   1   4   2  2   9
Jessica Bing      SF   30   2-5   1-2   1   4   1  2   5
Catalina Stewart  SG   32  7-13   3-4   0   4   3  1  18
Abagail Merkle    PG   16   3-5   2-3   0   2   0  4   8
Allison Riggle    PG    7   0-1   0-0   1   1   1  4   0
Maliah Lewellen   PF   18   0-1   2-4   1   3   1  2   2
Bella Grier       PF   13   0-1   2-4   0   2   1  1   2
Ashley Brown      C     8   0-1   0-0   0   0   0  1   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    3   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Jillian Ho        PG   16   2-8   1-2   1   1   2  0   5
Adalyn Matz       SF    1   1-1   0-0   0   0   0  0   2

Turnovers: 15 (J.Bing 3, C.Stewart 5, A.Merkle 2, 
A.Riggle 1, M.Lewellen 2, B.Grier 1, A.Bure 1)
Blocked Shots: 1 (C.Harrington 1)
Steals: 5 (C.Stewart 2, A.Riggle 1, B.Grier 2)
3P FGs: 1-5 (C.Harrington 0-1, C.Stewart 1-2, A.Merkle 
0-1, J.Ho 0-1)

Player of Game: C Jacqueline Grover (OAK)

The good news is that we played that game about as well as it can be played. The bad news is that we lost anyway.

It was a very slow first half. We were up 6-4 and then Oakland ran on us - a 12-0 run that put them up 16-6 with about seven minutes left in the first. From then on, we were just trying to hang. We managed to close within 5, 26-21 with 2:41 left in the first but the Golden Grizzlies took an eight-point lead into halftime, 34-26. They managed to extend the lead a little at the start of the second to go into double-digits and we more or less played them even.

We played them well defensively - they were held to just 42.9 percent shooting to our 42.1 percent. But we lost the rebounding battle 38-25 - they owned the boards. However, they committed 24 team fouls which sent us to the line 27 times, where we converted 18 of those attempts into points.

With the loss, we were 8-6 and solidly in fifth place. North Dakota State and UMKC were one game ahead of us, tied for third. We would need some help to be where we wanted to be in the post-season.

(* * *)

Summit League Games

Oakland 68, South Dakota 55: Oakland gets their 13th win in 14th conference games, despite a solid effort from the Yotes. The win guarantees the Golden Grizzlies at least a tie for first in conference.

Nebraska-Omaha 57, IPFW 54 (2 OT): At home the Mavericks get a double-overtime win on a last second drive to the basket by sophomore SF Dulce Diaz.

North Dakota State 56, Western Illinois 48: Bison sophomore PG and North Dakota native Saighe Christie leads all scorers with 20 points. The Fighting Leathernecks only shot 31 percent.

South Dakota State 66, UMKC 49: The Jacks win their eighth straight in the Summit League on UMKC's home court. Three players scored in double figures for SDSU, including senior SF Cheyanne Hardiman with 20 points and 8 rebounds. Senior PF Chelsea Norris had 15 points and 15 rebounds in the win.

(* * *)

Top 25

   #  Team                      FPV  Record  Points  Prv  Conference                          
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1.  Ohio State               (51)    25-2    1774    1  Big Ten Conference                  
  2.  Stanford                  (8)    24-2    1652    2  Pacific-12 Conference               
  3.  Baylor                    (1)    24-4    1638    5  Big 12 Conference                   
  4.  Notre Dame                (1)    23-2    1589    4  Big East Conference                 
  5.  Connecticut               (8)    24-1    1549    3  Big East Conference                 
  6.  Duke                      (3)    23-2    1446    6  Atlantic Coast Conference           
  7.  Maryland                         24-2    1386    7  Atlantic Coast Conference           
  8.  Oklahoma                         21-4    1305    8  Big 12 Conference                   
  9.  Florida State                    21-4    1230    9  Atlantic Coast Conference           
 10.  Kentucky                         22-3    1129   11  Southeastern Conference

Some shuffling around in the top 10, but no real changes. Kentucky moves to the Top 10 on the strength of a win over previous #10 Tennessee.

(* * *)

The final moments with Sarah Alex and her family went well. I thought she was an amazing, level-headed young lady who would be a real benefit to the team. I said, "Sarah, we definitely want you to be a part of the Coyote family."

The family sounded very happy. "We can let you know in a few days," Mr. Alex said.

"How few is a few days?" I asked.

"You will know something by the beginning of March," they said. We knew that the Division II and Division III schools in Texas had talked a good game with regard to Alex, but they had not come across. Undoubtedly, the Alexes would communicate to those schools the strength of our offer - and those schools would respond or fall out of the running. But even so, we were very, very confident.

(* * *)

Summit League Games

Oakland 71, IUPUI 37 On the road, Oakland clinches the Summit League regular season championship in convincing fashion. IUPUI fall to last place in the Summit League and is in danger of missing the post-season as only the top eight teams in the conference play in the post-season. (The win also secures a second-place finish for South Dakota State).

Western Illinois 48, Nebraska-Omaha 45: Chanel Steven's last-second 3-pointer misses as Western Illinois keeps its post-season hopes alive with a home win. Sophomore C Haleigh Tessier scored 13 points for the Fighting Leathernecks in the win.

(* * *)

February 28, 2013 - South Dakota (11-16, 8-6) at IPFW (11-17, 4-11)

2012-13 Summit League Standings

TEAM                                      CW  CL   Pct   W   L   Pct  RPI  Prestige
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oakland Golden Grizzlies                  14   1  .933  25   3  .893   67        44
South Dakota State Jackrabbits            12   3  .800  18   9  .667  129        60
North Dakota State Bison                   9   5  .643  13  14  .481  176        31
UMKC Kangaroos                             9   5  .643  14  13  .519  165        16
South Dakota Coyotes                       8   6  .571  11  16  .407  136         6
Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks                   5  10  .333  10  18  .357  293         5
IPFW Mastodons                             4  11  .267  11  17  .393  253        28
Western Illinois Fighting Leathernecks     3  12  .200   5  23  .179  336        10
IUPUI Jaguars                              2  13  .133   4  24  .143  266         7

This is the time of season where you don't want to be doing math. There's a three-way logjam between 3rd place and 5th place that will be broken in these last two games. UMKC and North Dakota State play each other today. If UMKC wins, they can't finish any worse than 10-6 and third place is going to be out of reach. We're hoping that North Dakota State wins that game - we've beat the Bison once and there's a hope we can win the tiebreaker. (UMKC has swept us for the season).

Of course, the dream of finishing third depends on us sweeping our two remaining opponents and hoping on prayer for the rest. We travel to Indianapolis to take on the IPFW Mastodons - due to there being nine teams in the Summit, today will be their Senior Day, the final game of the regular season. So the Mastodons will go out on the court with a little bit of extra oomph.

The Mastodons are losers of five of their last six. Their best player is not a senior but sophomore PG Emma Vallee, who improved from 6.1 ppg last year to 10.8 this year. Vallee has a lot of upside and will be a threat until she graduates but I suspect that IPFW won't be able to take advantage of her upside.

One senior that we'll be glad to see go is SG Isabella Britton, who is their primary post player with 9.2 ppg and 6.4 rpg. Another is defensive specialist SF Aimee McIntyre, who leads the Summit League with 1.5 steals per game. (Good thing she has 2.6 TO/game.)

My stress to the team is that IPFW is a pretty good team that shouldn't be overlooked. The only place where we're substantially ahead of them is in personal fouls - IPFW commits about four extra fouls per game compared to us. "They're tough, but they get wild out there and I suspect tonight they'll be tougher and wilder than ever given it's their senior day. The goal is to play our game and not their game."

"Remember we had to come from behind to win that game?" I said. "And it went into overtime? And how did we win that game last time? We were composed. Play hard. Play smart. And win this goddamned game."

IPFW 61, South Dakota 47

South Dakota (11-17, 8-7)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    21   1-3   2-4   3   6   2  4   4
C. Harrington     PF   27   2-5   0-0   1   6   1  3   4
Jessica Bing      SF   23   2-6   1-2   1   2   1  3   5
Catalina Stewart  SG   33   4-9   4-5   1   3   3  0  13
Abagail Merkle    SG   28  4-13   0-0   3   5   2  2   8
Allison Riggle    PG   28   3-5   0-0   0   1   0  0   7
Maliah Lewellen   C    19   0-2   0-0   1   4   0  2   0
Bella Grier       PF   15   2-3   2-3   0   1   1  1   6
Ashley Brown      C     4   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0
Anzhelika Bure    SG    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 13 (A.Choe 3, C.Harrington 1, J.Bing 3, 
C.Stewart 3, A.Merkle 1, A.Riggle 1, M.Lewellen 1)
Blocked Shots: 1 (A.Choe 1)
Steals: 4 (A.Choe 1, C.Stewart 1, A.Brown 2)
3P FGs: 2-8 (C.Harrington 0-1, J.Bing 0-2, C.Stewart 
1-1, A.Merkle 0-2, A.Riggle 1-2)

IPFW (12-17, 5-11)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Jaidyn Shanks     C    30   2-3   6-6   1   5   2  2  10
Janiah Johnson    PF   27   3-9   4-5   2   4   0  0  10
Aimee McIntyre    SF   25   3-7   1-2   0   1   1  4   7
Isabella Britton  SG   27  6-10   2-2   4  10   0  2  14
Emma Vallee       PG   27   2-8   0-0   2   5   2  2   5
Kai Eady          C    18   0-1   0-0   0   2   1  2   0
Gabriella Cardona SF   22   4-5   2-3   0   1   1  2  11
Pearl Siegel      SG   13   2-4   0-0   1   4   2  1   4
Emily Sellars     PF    7   0-0   0-0   0   0   1  1   0
Avery Delvalle    SF    4   0-1   0-0   0   0   2  0   0

Turnovers: 8 (J.Shanks 3, J.Johnson 2, K.Eady 1, 
P.Siegel 1, E.Sellars 1)
Blocked Shots: 1 (P.Siegel 1)
Steals: 4 (J.Johnson 1, I.Britton 2, P.Siegel 1)
3P FGs: 2-13 (J.Johnson 0-2, A.McIntyre 0-1, E.Vallee 
1-6, K.Eady 0-1, G.Cardona 1-1, P.Siegel 0-2)

Player of Game: SG Isabella Britton (IPFW)

To say that I was...well, enraged...is an understatement. We let four Mastodon players score in double digits. We played closely in the first half but they just handed us our hats in the second half and said, "So long, South Dakota." (We only scored 18 second half points.)

We were beaten in just about every aspect of the game. Shooting. Free throws. Rebounding. Turnovers (they only turned the ball over eight times). We were now the losers of three straight games and it looks like we were in a downward spiral.

I snapped at Raelynn Reavis when I sat down Angelina Choe (she had six rebounds). "She doesn't need sympathy, she needs some god-damned DRIVE!" Catalina stepped up with 13 points but had three turnovers. "Keep your eye on the ball for Christ's sake, Catalina!" Mailah Lewellen, our spark plug, had four boards but what we needed were some points.

"We let this game get away from us, and it was because you didn't put out the effort. You let your start in conference play go to your head, and you paid for it! Now you've wasted your opportunity! Now we're going to have to fight our way through the rest of the season, because make no mistake, we're fighing for survival now because of choices that you made."

"I've sense in the latter part of this season that there's something going on with this team that I don't know about. But I'm going to find out what it is. I'm going to get to the bottom of it. All we can do now is forget this. It's over. We lost, there's nothing we can do about it until we get back to the DakotaDome."

"And by the way - when you come to practice tomorrow, you're not wearing your assigned practice wear. You can wear whatever the hell it is you wear during pickup games, because I don't want to see what I saw today in practice. Whatever I saw sure as hell doesn't deserve to wear the name "SOUTH DAKOTA"!"

(* * *)

Summit League Games

IPWF 61, South Dakota 47. Ugh. Next game.

UMKC 74, North Dakota State 68. The win gives UMKC the best shot at third place in the conference. Our play for the rest of the year.

a) Beat Nebraska-Omaha on Senior Day

b) Hope that North Dakota State loses to South Dakota State in the final game of the year, and

c) Pray.

(* * *)

The calendar flipped over to March. The team didn't look much better in practice than they looked the previous day on the court. I thought about giving Ken Tomlinson another call.

As I left the court and walked back to my office, I was met by the secretary of the Athletic Department. "Hey, Mark, I just got a call from Sarah Alex and it is good news!"

I smiled. "Is it the best news?"

"You should probably check your cell phone. You were in practice so she couldn't reach anyone. Let's just say that we got a very nice present through our fax machine - !"

I walked into my office and grabbed my cell phone. Sure enough, Sarah Alex had called.

"Hello, Coach Hawkins! Sorry I couldn't reach you! We really liked South Dakota and I definitely want to play for you guys! So I went ahead and I faxed my letter of intent if that's all right! Anyway, just give me a call back if you need to talk to me. I hope you guys beat the University of Nebraska at Omaha tomorrow! Bye!"

For once, I had a phone call that I was happy to make. I welcomed Sarah Alex to the team and I told her we looked forward to seeing her as much as she looked forward to seeing us.

It was as if a massive burden was lifted off my shoulders. Unlike last year, I could now direct my focus entirely towards the team. No more trying to beat the recruiting deadline in April. Caitlyn Williams might have saved her job with that "pulling a rabbit out of hat" trick when Aaliyah Gray turned us down. (Emphasis on might have saved her job.)

(* * *)

March 2, 2013 - Nebraska-Omaha (10-18, 5-10) at South Dakota (11-17, 8-7)

2012-13 Summit League Standings

TEAM                                      CW  CL   Pct   W   L   Pct  RPI  Prestige
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oakland Golden Grizzlies                  14   1  .933  25   3  .893   67        44
South Dakota State Jackrabbits            12   3  .800  18   9  .667  126        60
UMKC Kangaroos                            10   5  .667  15  13  .536  155        16
North Dakota State Bison                   9   6  .600  13  15  .464  181        31
South Dakota Coyotes                       8   7  .533  11  17  .393  151         6
Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks                   5  10  .333  10  18  .357  294         5
IPFW Mastodons                             5  11  .313  12  17  .414  251        28
Western Illinois Fighting Leathernecks     3  12  .200   5  23  .179  336        10
IUPUI Jaguars                              2  13  .133   4  24  .143  268         7

SENIOR DAY. The final regular season game of the year. I was hoping that we could win more than 11 or 12 games this year, but it is an improvement. And we have the opportunity to improve even more if we can win a Summit League playoff game.

This year, we say goodbye to three players from the South Dakota family.

#0 - Jaylynn Adams

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/8199/2011jaylynnadams.jpg

Adams did not play a single game this year. She wasn't good enough. When a walk-on gets more time than you get on the court, that should be a sign. I joked to my staff - but never to her - that she couldn't hit a basket with a compass and a map. ("She wears that "zero" for a reason!") No mechanics, and no "power" for what one would call a power forward. I resolved never to let a South Dakota player wear #0 again.

Her parents were very polite, but very quiet. I think Adams really suffered riding the bench after playing in eight games last year. (She scored 2.6 ppg in 20.3 minutes per game.) The fact that she was a native South Dakotan really rankled the fans at West Central High School, the school where she played. I suspect that Adams would just be glad to be going.

#12 - Ashley Brown

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/6964/2011ashleybrown.jpg

Ashley was another player who suffered from the changeover in coaching. She started every game last year but didn't start a game this year. I had better players. She hit 12 of 13 free throws this year, her biggest contribution after going 12 for 61.

Ashley looked pretty miserable in that her college career wasn't what it could have been. Her parents, on the other hand, were quite gracious. "Thank you for keeping Ashley on the team," they told me. Apparently, they had a more realistic assessment of Brown's skills.

#3 - Angelina Choe

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/1207/2011angelinachoe.jpg

Angelina was one of the few bright spots that we didn't recruit. She started all but two games during the time I was here and she averaged 9.5 rpg in those two seasons. She was a two-time Player of the Game over those two years and I wondered what we were going to do without her rebounding next year. To find the next Angelina Choe - or better yet, an Angelina Choe that could shoot - would be the goal of the summer of 2013.

(* * *)

Of course, the Mavericks had some seniors that wanted to go out with a bang. One was senior C Kylie Davis who averaged 6.2 ppg and 6.9 rpg. But freshman PG Amya Weiss was going to be the point guard of the future. She had 9.0 points per game and 1.3 assists per game. Hopefully, UNO would not give her the ball much and put it in the hands of their seniors instead.

They were a team that still had some teeth in them, but they were seventh in the league in rebounding.

"This has been a great run, guys," I told the seniors. "To all the underclassmen - if you can work as hard as these guys, then you will accomplish a lot at South Dakota. We still have goals to meet and games to win, but you get great relationships for life at this level of college basketball. You're great and you have a great tradition behind you. This school is the best school in the state, and probably the best school in the world."

"Go out there and do things right. Let this game be a testament to our seniors and let it be the introduction to the post-season that they deserve. Let's carry them to the post-season in a way that they deserve."

South Dakota 47, Nebraska-Omaha 43

Nebraska-Omaha (10-19, 5-11)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Kylie Davis       C    26   1-3   2-2   2   4   0  4   4
Chanel Stevens    PF   30   3-6   0-0   3   7   2  3   6
Dulce Diaz        SF   23   1-9   2-2   0   2   1  2   5
Aaliyah Dube      SG   19   1-7   0-3   2   2   1  5   2
Amya Weiss        PG   29   3-5   0-0   4   6   1  4   8
Brianna Padilla   PG   28   1-5   0-0   0   1   0  1   2
Janelle Ainsworth SG   10   1-5   2-2   1   2   0  0   4
Halle McCully     C    18   0-0   2-2   3   4   2  2   2
Sophia Schaaf     SF   10   3-4   0-0   1   2   1  0   8
Cecilia Reilly    C     5   1-2   0-1   1   1   0  0   2
Khloe Hopkins     PF    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   1  0   0

Turnovers: 15 (C.Stevens 6, D.Diaz 1, A.Dube 2, 
B.Padilla 1, J.Ainsworth 1, H.McCully 2, S.Schaaf 2)
Blocked Shots: 0 
Steals: 0 
3P FGs: 5-19 (D.Diaz 1-6, A.Dube 0-4, A.Weiss 2-3, 
B.Padilla 0-1, J.Ainsworth 0-3, S.Schaaf 2-2)


Nebraska-Omaha (12-17, 9-7)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Player            Pos Min Fgm-a Ftm-a Off Reb Ast PF Pts
Angelina Choe     C    22   0-1   0-0   5  11   0  4   0
C. Harrington     PF   28   3-8   4-5   2   5   1  3  10
Jessica Bing      SF   31   0-3   1-2   0   2   1  1   1
Catalina Stewart  SG   31  5-10   2-4   1   5   1  2  12
Abagail Merkle    PG   29   3-6   4-4   3   4   0  1  10
Allison Riggle    PG   21   1-5   2-5   0   0   1  0   4
Maliah Lewellen   C    18   0-2   1-2   0   0   1  0   1
Bella Grier       PF   12   2-2   2-2   1   2   0  1   7
Ashley Brown      C     6   1-1   0-0   1   1   0  1   2
Anzhelika Bure    SG    1   0-0   0-0   0   0   0  0   0

Turnovers: 13 (A.Choe 1, C.Harrington 4, J.Bing 1, 
C.Stewart 2, A.Merkle 1, A.Riggle 2, M.Lewellen 1, 
B.Grier 1)
Blocked Shots: 2 (A.Choe 1, B.Grier 1)
Steals: 3 (C.Harrington 1, B.Grier 2)
3P FGs: 1-12 (C.Harrington 0-3, C.Stewart 0-5, A.Merkle 
0-1, A.Riggle 0-1, M.Lewellen 0-1, B.Grier 1-1)

Player of Game: PF Bella Grier (SD)

Nebraska-Omaha didn't want to go down without a fight, but we had more fight.

Defensively - we were everything we needed to be. But we didn't shoot well. We shot only 39.5 percent (luckily, the Mavs only shot 32.6 percent). We were outrebounded 31-30. We were only 1-for-12 from 3-point range.

It wasn't going to be their night though. On a night that was to honor the seniors, three players scored in double figures - Abagail Merkle (10), Catalina Stewart (12) and Caroline Herrington (10). The offense was going to go through them and they did not spread the ball around. As these were all my recruits, I began to get a sense of exactly what was going on behind the scenes that I didn't see.

Even so, Angelina Choe picked up 11 rebounds, her typical game and one appropriate for her on Senior Night. But after leading 29-21 after one half, the Mavericks got within 4-to-6 points and stayed there. Halle McCully made a pair of free throws with 1:31 left to close Nebraska-Omaha with two, 45-43.

Then, Caroline Herrington got called for an illegal screen. I swore as Aaliyah Dube took a shot at the 1-and-1. But she missed the first shot and Choe got the rebound.

I looked at a sign a fan was holding:

UNIVERSITY OF

NO

OPORTUNITY

The opportunity UNO was looking for was to get the ball back. Down by two points, they committed four consecutive fouls in an attempt to bring us to the free throw line. With nine seconds left, Abagail Merkle had the game in her hands - and she sank both free throw attemps. A 3-point shot from the left wing by the Mavs fell short, and Choe's final regular-season rebound of her college career ended the game with a Yotes win.

It was over. we were 9 and 7 on the year, most likely to face North Dakota State in the first round of the Summit League tournament That game would take place over a week from now, and we'd have ample time for preparation.

(* * *)

Summit League Games

South Dakota 47, Nebraska-Omaha 43. Go Yotes!

South Dakota State 63, North Dakota State 62. With 12 seconds left, a 3-pointer by senior Jaliyah Weatherby gives the Jacks the come-from-behind win and sends them to the Summit League tournament on a high note.

Oakland 76, Western Illinois 56. Oakland costs to a home win in its final regular season game. They'll take on Western Illinois in the first round of the Summit League tournament in a rematch.

UMKC 57, IUPUI 49. The Jags actually led 21-20 in the first half but couldn't pull it off despite shooting 54.3 percent. Senior C Madison Bright scored 19 points to lead the Roos to third place in the Summit League. IUPUI finishes last in the conference and will not make the post-season.

2012-13 Summit League : Final Standings

TEAM                                      CW  CL   Pct   W   L   Pct  RPI  Prestige
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oakland Golden Grizzlies                  15   1  .938  26   3  .897   76        44
South Dakota State Jackrabbits            13   3  .813  19   9  .679  120        60
UMKC Kangaroos                            11   5  .688  16  13  .552  162        16
North Dakota State Bison                   9   7  .563  13  16  .448  176        31
South Dakota Coyotes                       9   7  .563  12  17  .414  152         6
Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks                   5  11  .313  10  19  .345  295         5
IPFW Mastodons                             5  11  .313  12  17  .414  245        28
Western Illinois Fighting Leathernecks     3  13  .188   5  24  .172  333        10
IUPUI Jaguars                              2  14  .125   4  25  .138  266         7

(* * *)

Few people seem to care about women's basketball, and in that world few women's basketball fans seem to care about the Summit League. The big game for women's BB fans tonight was the visit of #4 Notre Dame, the defending National Champion, to #5 Connecticut - which had won a few championships of its own.

Connecticut only had one loss on the year - but the Fighting Irish delivered the second one on the way to a 79-71 victory. Four players on the Notre Dame squad were in double figures with senior SF Elizabeth Weimer leading the way with 18 points and five rebounds. Notre Dame looked like it might secure its shot at a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, barring a disaster in the Big East tournament.

(* * *)

Around the world

In late February, the Gaia Mission was launched.

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/7563/gaiacam013h.jpg

GAIA was launched by the European Union as a device to measure starts - their brightness and positions. Mankind has been getting better and better at detecting the presence of planets around stars and this effort will expand that - it is estimated that up to 30,000 new planets might be detected. The mission will complete our map of the universe in astounding ways.

(* * *)

WRITER'S NOTES

Done with the regular season. The final standings indicate exactly the order of teams. The top eight Summit League teams go to the post-season, so South Dakota will take on North Dakota State in the opening round of the tournament.

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