BROOKINGS – The South Dakota State men’s and women’s basketball teams close out the regular season this weekend with a pair of games against Kansas City. The women will look to finish the Summit League regular season undefeated while the men are looking to remain in the top-three of the conference standings.

Women

SDSU head coach Aaron Johnston announced Tuesday that the Jackrabbits’ leading scorer, Myah Selland, will likely be out the rest of the year. The junior forward who was averaging 19.2 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.8 assists injured her knee during the first game against North Dakota State this past weekend.

“I think Myah is going to have a season-ending injury at this point unless something really changes,” Johnston said. “We don’t see her returning to the lineup here as we go forward, so that’s a really tough blow anytime that happens to any player and I think our team is not unique. We know that a lot of players and teams go through those kind of injuries. I just think everybody feels a little differently in Myah’s case considering it seems like she’s had something like this every year that she’s been at South Dakota State. Just bad luck I guess. I think that makes it more of a gut blow for everybody.” 

SDSU also suffered another big loss in the first game against NDSU. Starting forward Tori Nelson also went down with a knee injury. Johnston said Nelson is week-to-week at the moment, but they are hoping to have her back for the Summit League Tournament, which starts March 6.

SDSU clinched a share of the regular-season Summit League championship and the No. 1 seed at the Summit League Tournament last weekend with its sweep of the Bison. Kansas City comes into the game in fourth place in the conference with an overall record of 10-9 and 7-6 in the league.

“[Kansas City] is scary because of how good they are offensively. They shoot the ball really well and their stats bear that out. They’ve had some players go off for some amazing individual performances. So they have the ability to score points and they can do it in the transition, half court, free-throw line, getting to the basket. They’re a scary offensive team. Defensively too, they cause problems for teams,” Johnston said. 

Tylee Irwin scored a career-high 31 points in the second game against NDSU. That followed a 25-point performance in Game 1 against the Bison. Johnston said the Jacks are going to need to have her continue to play well if they want to extend their 16-game win streak.

“We don’t expect [Tylee to score 31 points every game], but I want it on record that if she wants to I’m fine with that too. Let’s not minimalize that value. … Tylee has played with those really good players throughout her career and she’s found a way to fit and bring value to our team with some of those talents around her. I think she certainly has given a little bit of what she’s capable of doing based on how we were playing as a team and what we thought the best plan was at that time. I think we have a handful of other players, who I’m not saying will score 30, but probably have not been able to play as much or their roles have been minimized because of the people in front of them and they can now all do a little bit more too,” Johnston said.

Men

SDSU finds itself in third place heading into the final weekend of regular-season play. The Jacks are 7-3 in the conference and sit behind NDSU (10-4) and USD (10-3), who play each other in Vermillion.

The Jacks will take on red hot Kansas City. The Roos have won five-straight games and now sit in fifth place in the conference. They are just a half a game back of Oral Roberts for fourth place.

Kansas City is led by Brandon McKissic, who is sixth in the Summit League in scoring averaging 17.5 points per game. The Roos as a team are right in the middle of the pack offensively averaging 71 points per game, but are the No. 1 scoring defense in the league giving up just 60.8 points per game.

“We certainly know we have our hands full with a great Kansas City team,” said SDSU head coach Eric Henderson. “They’re physical. They lower the possessions to try and keep the games close and if you look at their scorers, that’s what they do. … They’re very disciplined on both ends of the floor. I think their team and coach should get a lot of credit with how physical and disciplined they are on the defensive end and make it extremely challenging for you to score and they try to get you out of rhythm and take your strengths away. 

“… The thing about Kansas City is they’re just a little bit different than every other team in our league. They have that physicality that they play with. The style that they play with offensively is something that we don’t see and haven’t seen in a little bit of time in our league.”

SDSU has been through a lot so far this season. The Jacks went 5-3 in their first eight games, but then took 23 days off due to scheduling. SDSU had two Summit League series canceled due to COVID issues with the other team. Then last week SDSU’s second leading scorer, Noah Freidel, announced he will be sitting out the rest of the season to work on his mental health.

With all of that, Henderson said he is proud of his team so far this season, but there’s a lot of work left to be done.

“I’m very proud of our guys for dealing with the adversity we’ve had to deal with. We’ve had a lot of things happening. Whether it’s injuries, health, disruptions within our schedule, big long breaks and then unexpected breaks. So for how our guys have handled that and that adversity and those situations, man I’ll tell you what, I’m really proud of them. On the other hand, we’re excited for these last couple weeks before tournament play because we want to get better. We want to get more consistent. If we can get a little more consistent defensively and still find our identity offensively, that’s what we’re excited for and hopeful for. I think we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished and proud of where we’re at, but I think the best is yet to come,” Henderson said.

The women’s games are set to tip off at 5 p.m. and the men are scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. both nights.