@ SDSTC

[easmus]

Tom Nieman was calling the game yesterday and he is an alumnus of state.

I guess those minutes played and number of players deep is different than I would have guessed. Maybe we give state the benefit of the doubt because they have earned it? We have been good, but need a few more SLT titles before we get that benefit.

[Yotes]

I don't have any problem saying their women's team is better this year. Honestly, I'm surprised it was ever in question considering all of our graduations and injuries.

Doesn't mean they are a lock for the tournament title though. You can argue the best team in the conference hasn't won that since 2013.

[steelsd]

Feb 5, 2017 13:12:02 GMT -6 Coyote Fan said:

Why is it that the Coyotes lack of depth seems to be such a big issue but the Jacks lack of depth doesn't seem to be a big deal. The Jacks will have just as much of a problem getting through the Summit Tourney as the Coyotes will. The Coyotes have been giving more time to Bonar and Frederick lately. The Coyotes play their top 6 a lot but they are developing some players to play more to help out more in that area. The Midco announcers kept mentioning the Coyotes like they were wearing down or couldn't handle the Jacks, but they didn't really mention the Jacks having the same problem. Typical SDSU bias which is not surprising.

The Coyotes played 9 players and the bench played 58 minutes and contributed 18 points
The Jacks played 8 players and the bench played 48 minutes and contributed 8 points

Obviously Miller being out hurts the Jacks but the Coyotes are without Duffy and Trimboli and lost so much more during the off season. I think people need to check the facts a little more often.

If you look at the rosters the Jacks don't have much for contributions from their freshman or sophopmores right now. The Coyotes are looking like the team that is going to be in better shape when looking a couple of years down the line. Just last year the Jacks were that team but suddenly the future outlook looks pretty good for the Yotes, and who know how long Aaron Johnston sticks around.      

Actually neither team is particularly deep and the extra day at the SLT would benefit both teams.  As for the "typical SDSU bias" that you allude to, there was mention of "wearing down" related specifically to USD exactly two times.  Both were related to situations where the Jacks got a rebound and pushed down the court for layups.  There was also one mention of both teams being fatigued due to the intensity of the defense both teams were playing (an obvious compliment).  They also mentioned one time when Ober looked tired and was best playing in 2-3 minute "spurts."  So hardly a "SDSU bias" as you allude to.  Also, the announcer who made all of these individual comments was not Nieman (the SDSU grad) but actually the color guy Brad Newitt, who was actually an assistant at USD at one time.  This is unlike the USD games where the two announcers are Jay Elsen (who hosts the Coyote Corner) and Kelly Stewart (USD grad).  But I'm sure they are biased against you guys too when they announce games...  You know, media and all!

But lets be honest, when you are watching a game that is being played at the other teams place, you probably should expect a slight bias towards the home team.  I don't have a problem with that unless the announcers start complaining about calls, etc.  I honestly think the Midco Sports Net games on ESPN three are pretty well done.  If you don't think so, listen to someone like the Western Illinois guy for like 2 minutes...

As for your last point, coming down the road we have a pretty good Sophomore in Guebert as well as getting decent minutes from Sydney Palmer.  For current Freshman we are getting solid minutes from Sydney Tracy and will have Iowa transfer Tagyn Larson who will also be a Sophomore coming off redshirt.  Considering we expect Miller to get 2 more years as well I think we feel very good about our future.  That doesn't include upcoming recruits which we are excited about (as are you guys I'm sure).  Also, our coaching staff does a great job of keeping our classes spaced out so we don't tend to lose as much to graduation as some teams.  This also means that younger players don't get on the court quite as quickly as some other programs as there are good players in front of them.  We have a number of young bigs who we hope can develop and be the next Ober (who averaged less than 5 ppg as a Freshman). 

So really, trying to guess who is going to be better down the road is really quite futile.  We can both attest to how injuries can change an outlook in a hurry.  Plus, maybe one of our young kids makes a huge jump in the next year like Arens did for you guys.  So one never knows, but the rivalry should stay very competitive and interesting as both programs look to be doing things the right way.    

Personally I love how improved the Summit League is right now.  Yes, winning multiple league titles and going to the dance is great, but doing so when you know your conference kind of sucks takes away from that somewhat.  Maybe the success of SDSU/USD the last few years has made this conference attractive to players and is benefitting other teams in our conference as well.  With UND coming on board with a strong women's program, whoever qualifies from this conference going forward will hopefully be a battle tested team who can make some noise when they get to the NCAA's/WNIT. 

[easmus]

I think these are fair points all the way around. The level of competition getting better is great and hopefully takes us to a 2 bid league at some point.

[kiyoat]

We will bounce back, and should finish both the regular season and the tournament with revenge rematches vs the Lady Leathernecks, (is that a thing?), and the Jacks.

Just like our non-conference schedule, I think the end of the season happens to line up perfectly in terms of increasing difficulty: @ Ft Wayne...... 2 home games vs ORU and Omaha..... @ IUPUI.....@ WIU.

Then a similar situation in the Tournament, assuming we get a top-2 seed.

time for a Rocky-like training montage video....... (The Jacks play the part of Ivan Drago, of course)

[kiyoat]

I watched the post-game comments from the coaches and players, and of course most of it was coach-speak vanilla stuff, complimenting the other team, etc.

There were a couple of jabs, though, if you listen close:

Coach AJ: He's very careful to only make comments about his own players, fans, etc. He didn't mention any of USD's players or coaches at all in the interview. While I can understand this mindset, he refrained from complimenting USD's team or coach even when given opportunities with the questions he was given. Instead of giving the Coyotes credit for staying with them, he instead talked about how his team had lots of opportunities to pull away, but failed to. Sneaky.

Coach P: When asked if the crowd was a big factor, she said no, it was really more about the quality team we were playing. When asked again about the crowd size, she said well Saturdays in February are a great time to draw big crowds for basketball. Mentioned that our crowd was pretty big given that the game was on New Year's Eve.

She broke down the matchups and strategies that were giving us problems in quite a bit of detail, always commenting on how State did a good job of this or that, and specifically mentioning State players that are great athletes, like Ober and Thompson.

When asked about if Fogg getting into foul trouble early was a factor she said yes, was a huge factor because they missed her rebounding in the game when she had to be benched. Also said they had hoped to get one of the Jacks post players in foul trouble too, (Thompson) but didn't get those calls. Said right after that the officials did a great job, but you could tell she didn't mean it. LOL

[kiyoat]

Here's a gem from Ober:

When asked about Allison Arens, and if they keyed in on her in the game, both Young and Ober agreed.

Young: "Yeah, a lot of what they do runs through her, so I think keying in on her, everyone knowing where she is on the floor... She likes to do that little spin move, ... if we can key in on that, and try to help, and take that away from her, that helped us a lot today too."

Ober: "Yeah, and going off of that: If she doesn't score, their offense doesn't go anywhere.... So when we shut her down, their whole team shuts down as well."


put that one up on the lockerroom wall, IMO....

[jackjd]

Seriously, kiyoat? What interview did you listen to? The official post-game interview with AJ linked on the Argus site includes the following examples of compliments (if that's what trips your trigger):
at 1:05 AJ stated USD's offense puts a lot of pressure on the opponent's defense.
1:38 AJ stated USD made some nice plays to get back into the game.
3:10 AJ referred to the final outcome as a "big win". He's complimenting the opponent.
4:24 When asked about the rivalry, he said it's getting back to the level of intensity of the old NCC days.

Listen to the questions being asked of the coaches and players. The interviewees are just responding to questions and most of the questions do not seek compliments about the other team.

[kiyoat]

Feb 6, 2017 14:00:10 GMT -6 jackjd said:

Seriously, kiyoat? What interview did you listen to? The official post-game interview with AJ linked on the Argus site includes the following examples of compliments (if that's what trips your trigger):
at 1:05 AJ stated USD's offense puts a lot of pressure on the opponent's defense.
1:38 AJ stated USD made some nice plays to get back into the game.
3:10 AJ referred to the final outcome as a "big win". He's complimenting the opponent.
4:24 When asked about the rivalry, he said it's getting back to the level of intensity of the old NCC days.

Listen to the questions being asked of the coaches and players. The interviewees are just responding to questions and most of the questions do not seek compliments about the other team.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oPlRF7p0P8

AJ is a pretty experienced coach, and he does a good job with his coachspeak.  It's a very subtle thing, but when you listen to most coaches, they are OVERLY complimentary to opposing teams and coaches, even when most objective assessment might say otherwise.

AJ chooses to focus on his own team, which is fine.  Here are a couple of examples where I thought he evaded a direct question about USD (credit the media for trying to elicit something controversial):

1:21 Reporter asks why the point spread stayed at around 10 points all game: "the lead kind of stayed the same the whole game....is that a credit to USD for hanging in, a credit to you guys for keeping at bay, or both?" His answer mainly talked about how they had opportunities to extend the lead, but their (SDSU's) offense just could have been better.

3:21 Standings wise, yeah, it's a big part of it, just like Oral Roberts will be a big part of it, then having to go on the road at IUPUI and Western Illinois, and so on. (I read this as downplaying it a bit)

nothing earth-shattering, just a contrast to what you hear from most coaches.  Maybe he is just a reserved guy.  Really, I thought the comment from Ober was more arrogant.

[kiyoat]

And here's an example of the comments from Coach P about State:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bD3TqMDoeM

"South Dakota State's a very very good team, they're a very good team at home. I thought they played very well. They really gave us fits at both ends of the court."

"They did a good job of staying really tight to our perimeter kids."

"Great atmosphere for women's basketball"

"I told our kids after the game-- This is an extremely, extremely talented team. There's a reason why you guys(the media) have picked them and we (the coaches) have picked five of their players to be in the top 12 players in the conference! They're really, really good!"

"Having Ober back does make a difference. She's a very talented kid..... We tried to change some strategies on how we were guarding them (post players), but however we guard them they have a counter to it. She's really really good. And Thompson's very solid. Those two logged a lot of minutes.... and really made things difficult for us."

[kiyoat]

Here's the players interviews:

USD's players
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_F5PTu8JaY&t=2s

SDSU's players
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY5YtMoeq68

[steelsd]

"South Dakota State's a very very good team, they're a very good team at home. I thought they played very well. They really gave us fits at both ends of the court."
Was an opening statement. Does a USD fan know of the link to AJ's presser after the game down there. Would be curious if he didn't say something similar.



"They did a good job of staying really tight to our perimeter kids."
This was a response to a question about SDSU closing out hard on the perimeter and USD not having a lot of room to breath or get shots off. So basically the question fed her right in this direction. Of course this is where she started to question the officiating as well.



"Great atmosphere for women's basketball"

In response to being asked about the environment as a whole. Then she proceeded to hint that USD would have been better except for the split due to holidays and the men's game. So her positive response had a caveat to it. As an SDSU fan myself, was she dissing our crowd?!



"I told our kids after the game-- This is an extremely, extremely talented team. There's a reason why you guys(the media) have picked them and we (the coaches) have picked five of their players to be in the top 12 players in the conference! They're really, really good!"
"Having Ober back does make a difference. She's a very talented kid..... We tried to change some strategies on how we were guarding them (post players), but however we guard them they have a counter to it. She's really really good. And Thompson's very solid. Those two logged a lot of minutes.... and really made things difficult for us."

Both of these were in response to a direct question about the difference Ober made between the two games. Of course, again she started to mention those pesky fouls again... I went back and watched the post game interview from the USD game and she didn't once mention how disadvantaged SDSU was based of the officiating in that game. Seems she only brings this up when the officiating doesn't benefit her. How dare she!



Of course she was asked about defense and said it was more about them not executing and missing shots. She didn't directly credit the awesomeness that is SDSU's defense. So shame on her!



So seriously, how much outside credit is enough for you USD fans? It seems you guys really like to seek out sleights to your team in pretty much everything. So basically the officiating and media were totally against you. And now AJ doesn't give you enough credit. Is there anything else?! And as for the Ober comment, maybe it was arrogant. But was it wrong? I guess I tend to give college kids some leeway in post game interviews.

[kiyoat]

The link to the AJ interview is in my previous post. No, he doesn't say anything like that.

Take a look at the players interviews, if you care to. Its often tough to watch the players interviews if they have just lost the game. Especially this one. It looks like Jaycee is holding back tears. And yet both players give credit to SDSU's players and their defense multiple times. Classy, IMO.

When they asked the Jacks players about Arens, they just talked about how they shut her down, and how the whole offense runs through her, so by focusing on her they could shut us down. No mention of her abilities or accomplishments this year (which have been many).

Hey, I don't expect them to stroke USD's ego, but I just think that it is easy to see the arrogant culture when you contrast these interviews. Its even more obvious with the fans, but I won't start that discussion.

[coyote70]

And here I thought NDSU was State's biggest rival....

[kiyoat]

Feb 6, 2017 15:37:20 GMT -6 steelsd said:

...  And as for the Ober comment, maybe it was arrogant. But was it wrong?... 

Actually my whole point was that it was arrogant, so thank you for agreeing with me.

But since you brought it up, yeah, its wrong.  Shutting down USD's offense isn't just as simple as slowing Arens, or more teams would have shut us down.  AA has been targeted before, and other players have stepped up and had big games.  I credit SDSU for having a great game-plan: Containing Arens, agressive perimeter defense, and dominant post play.  Even with that we still shot more efficiently than State.  We just committed way too many fouls and turnovers.  Forced turnovers.