BROOKINGS – At the beginning of the season the burning question for the South Dakota State men’s basketball team was, is Zeke Mayo ready to lead the team? Now that we sit a week into February, I think it’s safe to say that he is the leader of the team and has made the Sophomore jump that everyone was hoping he would make.

Mayo earned his third Summit League Player of the Week award on Monday and was also named the Lou Henson National Player of the Week. Mayo capped off an impressive week with a career-high 41 points, five assists and zero turnovers in a 90-85 win over North Dakota State on Saturday. He began the week with a team-high 24 points and made the go-ahead free throws in a 67-66 win over Kansas City on Monday. In the middle of the week he had a double-double with 14 points, 10 rebounds and six assists in a win over North Dakota.

The last week for Mayo was the peak of about a month and a half stretch where he has taken over for the Jackrabbits.

The stretch started on Dec. 12 when he scored what at the time was a career-high 30 points and helped lead SDSU to a 23-point comeback win over Eastern Washington. He followed that up two weeks later with 33 points against Western Illinois, including scoring the final 15 points for SDSU in a win over the Leathernecks. On Jan. 19 he had his third 30-point output of the season as he scored 31 points and went 6-of-8 from three in a win over Omaha. Two days later he scored 23 points in the first half against Denver and made seven threes in the first half.

In Summit League play Mayo is averaging 21.7 points per game and has scored more than 20 points in six of his past seven games. After the 41-point performance against NDSU, which was the second highest scoring output in Frost Arena history, he gave credit to his teammates for giving him the confidence to be the leader of the Jacks.

“It all starts with my coaches and my teammates. In practice they try to install into my head that they want the ball in my hands, so I work on stuff like this, but at the end of the day it’s all about my coaches and my teammates,” Mayo said.

Last season, Mayo shared the backcourt with Summit League Player of the Year Baylor Scheierman. He came off of the bench in the first 14 games of the season but was then thrown into the starting lineup in the second conference game after Noah Freidel was sent to the bench. Mayo then thrived in his off-guard role averaging 9.6 points per game and shooting 46.7% from the field and 41.5% from three in his first season as a Jackrabbit.

Scheierman would then transfer to Creighton in the offseason and SDSU also saw its second leading scorer in Douglas Wilson graduate. The Jacks were in need of a new offensive leader and Mayo has been just that as he’s averaging 18.1 points per game and is shooting 44% from the field and 39.4% from three in his bigger role.

“I’ve always had a lot of confidence in [Mayo] and Zeke knows that,” said SDSU head coach Eric Henderson. “You never know what pace [the development] goes at, you never do. Him stepping into that role this year when Baylor left and Doug left, was he ready or was he not ready, was kind of what the question was. I always knew that he had it him and this year he’s certainly been learning on the job.

“How he’s done that, the maturity he’s done that with and the selflessness he’s done that with, obviously I love him scoring and I love the way he’s playing, but I’m just really happy for him as a player and the growth of a young man maturity wise.”

Mayo has had just as big of an improvement in rebounding and passing as he has in scoring. Mayo averaged 2.9 rebounds and 2.1 assists last season and is now averaging 6.2 boards and dishes out 3.4 assists per game this season.

Scheierman averaged 7.8 rebounds and 4.5 assists for the Jacks last season and Mayo said that part of becoming the leader of the team is going after rebounds on the defensive end.

“[Scheierman] averaged almost 10 rebounds per game last year and as a guard, if you can rebound it makes it so much easier for us in transition. We can play a lot faster. I mean, you saw [in the win over North Dakota], we were getting easy transition buckets [off of my rebounds]. So, when our guards are rebounding like I have been, I need to get more consistent with that, but it’s easier to play on offense,” Mayo said.

Another big development that has allowed Mayo to become such a potent scorer is being able to score off of the dribble. Whether it’s been getting to the basket or pulling up for a three, Mayo has scored at a much higher volume this season. Lately one of his patented moves has been the step-back three, a shot that not a lot of players have success with in college basketball.

Henderson said that is a shot that he will always trust that Mayo can make.

“I want our guys to have the confidence and know that I have a belief in them. You know how many times Zeke has worked on that [step-back three]? I trust him and I believe him. … I know it can be a difficult shot at times, but he’s proven over time that he can make that shot,” Henderson said.

After a rocky start to the season, which saw SDSU have a record of 5-7 heading into conference play, Mayo and the Jacks have weathered the storm and find themselves alone in second place in the Summit League after going 9-4 in conference play so far. SDSU now has five games left in the regular season before the Summit League Tournament in Sioux Falls in March.

Should the Jackrabbits want to have a chance at upsetting first place Oral Roberts, who is undefeated in conference play so far, they’ll need Mayo to continue playing at this level, and everyone on SDSU knows that.

“[Mayo] knows that this team needs him to be aggressive,” Henderson said. “This team needs him to have the ball in his hands. This team believes that whether he’s shooting the ball or somebody else is shooting the ball, we believe in each other.”