Weekend leftovers: IUPUI and Western Illinois
You know the drill - here are some extras from the latest weekend in South Dakota State hoops:
Jacks junior Jordan Dykstra bounced back from an off weekend on the road with a strong showing at home - consecutive double-doubles, his sixth and seventh of the season. SDSU is unbeaten in those contests, five of which have come at home.
Western Illinois coach Jim Molinari referenced having played SDSU on several senior nights. This was the second in three years, the other being the finale for the Dale Moss/Clint Sargent/Payton Tivis trio. The Necks have also been to Frost for the penultimate home game in two of the last four years.
The SDSU men bounced back from their worst two-game stand of the season in terms of scoring defense (162) with their best, giving up a total of 100 vs. IUPUI and WIU. The Jacks also finished plus-25 in rebound margin for the weekend.
The crowd 6,103 was the Jacks’ third home sellout of the season - all in the last five games. SDSU had a total of one home sellout in its first eight seasons at the NCAA Division I level.
The late surge helped SDSU push its season average to 3,625 up from 3,320 last year and a new school best in D-I.
A couple of interesting quotes from Jacks coach Scott Nagy. 1) He said he wasn’t afraid of moving the senior ceremony to the post-game - it’s usually held before tipoff - because Nate Wolters and Tony Fiegen were worth celebrating regardless of a single result and 2) that WIU is a good team and not just a team that’s good at what it does.
On a related note, Wolters and Fiegen finished 36-10 in Frost and were instrumental in back-to-back unbeaten marks there. SDSU had only two perfect home marks in program history prior to that (1984-85 and 2002-03).
Wolters scored 891 of his 2,220 career points in that building.
The Necks are 15-5 in their last 20 Summit League games including postseason play. Four of those losses have been to the Jacks, who have won nine a row in the series. Oakland is the only other victor in that stretch.
The SDSU women had their lead in the loss column trimmed to one game by splitting a weekend road series. The loss came against second-place IUPUI - again. The Jags have handed the Jacks both their conference defeats this season after being winless in the first 12 game of the series.
This is the third time that SDSU has dropped both regular-season meetings to a Summit squad the others coming in 2009-10 and 2010-11 against Oral Roberts. In the first case, the Jacks prevailed in the third meeting. In the second case, there was no third meeting because ORU was upset prior to the conference tournament finals.
SDSU is 14-2 in its last 16 games going back to Dec. 18 with both losses coming at the hands of the Jags.
SDSU is 4 of 40 from 3-point range this season against IUPUI, well below their season average of 33.5 percent. Also, the Jacks gave up 70 points, their worst performance in terms of scoring defense since Nov. 28 in an overtime affair against Marquette.
Jacks senior Ashley Eide, a Washington High grad, topped the 1,000-point mark for her career Saturday in Macomb. She’s the sixth player from the 2009-10 team to reach that total, following Jill Young, Jennie Sunnarborg, Ketty Cornemann, Maria Boever and Kristin Rotert.
Terry Vandrovec also posts regular updates on his Twitter page.
