VERMILLION – The South Dakota State men completed the South Dakota Showdown sweep on Saturday night as the Jackrabbits handled South Dakota and came away with an 82-64 victory at the Sanford Coyote Sports Center.

“I’m really, really proud of our team. It’s probably as good of a 40 minutes as we’ve played all year on both sides,” said SDSU head coach Eric Henderson. “Our guys’ focus and our guys’ togetherness was really special and I’m proud of our guys to come into a rivalry game like this and compete the way we did.”

The Jackrabbit women completed the first half of the sweep on Saturday afternoon when they blew out Coyotes, 118-59, at Frost Arena in Brookings.

The two men’s teams traded baskets the first 10 minutes of the game and USD led 16-15. The Jacks (9-9, 3-2) then went on a 16-0 run to go up 31-16 with just over four minutes left in the first half.

The Coyotes (8-10, 3-3) would then go on a 7-0 run to cut the lead to 31-23 with 3:14 left. The Jacks responded with an 8-2 run to close out the half and led 39-25 at halftime.

SDSU led 50-35 and then went on a 9-0 to give the Jacks their largest lead of the game at 59-35. USD would cut the lead to 69-53 and then trailed 73-58 with 3:51 left in the game but that would be as close as the Coyotes would get.

The Jacks shot 47.5% from the field and were 8-31 from three. SDSU went 2-17 from beyond the arc in the first half and made six of its 14 attempts from deep in the second.

We were 2-17 from the arc in the first half, but I want to say, I really liked the shots we were taking,” Henderson said. “I liked the shots that we were getting and that’s really the only thing that I’m concerned about. … They were timely [three’s in the second half].”

The Jacks were led by Matt Dentlinger who had 26 points and eight rebounds. Dentlinger went 10-11 from the field and was 6-6 at the free throw line.

Zeke Mayo had 19 points, eight rebounds and six assists. Matt Mims had 13 points and four rebounds. Matthew Mors and Alex Arians each had 10 points. Arians also had seven rebounds and four assists.

USD shot 37.5% from the field and was 8-24 from three. The ‘Yotes were led by Paul Bruns who had 16 points and five rebounds. A.J. Plitzuweit, Mason Archambault and Kruz Perrott-Hunt each had 10 points.

Dentlinger said it was the guards that led the defensive effort on Saturday night.

“A lot of [the success on defense] was, the guards did a great job tonight. Zeke [Mayo], Mims, Alex [Arians], Tanner [Te Slaa], and they just really stopped their guards. You know, [USD] has a good guard front. And then in the ball screens we were just trying to stop them from getting the pick and pop screens, so we were focusing on that too. We had good help side defense and got a lot of blocks and charges,” Dentlinger said.

The Jacks won the rebound battle 39-27. Nine of those SDSU rebounds came on the offensive side and Henderson said that is a big focus that the Jacks have worked on.

[Rebounding] is something that we talked a lot about, and I’ve mentioned to the press that it’s something that is going to dictate, a lot of times, the game that we play in. It’s on both sides. You can make an impact on the glass if you make a better effort on the offensive glass too.

We’ve struggled a little bit at times offensively. Not a little bit, at times we’ve struggled a lot. So, we’ve talked about trying to find different ways to get more possessions and to create more opportunities, and our guys are taking that to heart,” Henderson said.

SDSU will return home next weekend. The Jacks will play Omaha on Thursday at 7 p.m. and will then take on Denver on Saturday at 2 p.m. SDSU has won three of its past four games and now sits in third place in the Summit League. Dentlinger said there’s been improvement for the Jacks, but they still have a way to go if they want to finish in first.

“We’re starting to feel better. We still have a lot of room to grow, like we said think we’ve said in the past few postgame press conferences. We know we still have to get better and we know we have to get a lot better if we want to win this league,” Dentlinger said.