BROOKINGS — South Dakota State will play its first conference road game on Wednesday night as the Jackrabbits will take on St. Thomas in St. Paul.

SDSU won its first conference game on Jan. 2 against Denver, 91-70. The Jacks have lost all four road games they’ve played so far this season.

The four losses came to No. 5 Alabama, Colorado, Montana and Nevada. The four teams have a combined record of 38-19.

SDSU head coach Eric Henderson said he thinks the winless record on the road is a product of playing good teams, but he’s curious to see if his team has grown and when they play on the road twice this week.

“With these young guys, experiencing [road games] a couple times, and when you’re talking about the road games [we’ve played], they haven’t been easy,” Henderson said. “Not that these ones coming up are going to be easy, but we’ve played in some challenging spots. So, I think there’s a little bit to that, but we also were competitive in some of those games as well.

“I think there were some good moments on the road, but we haven’t been able to finish the deal. I think that’s the next step with this group. We want to continue to face adversity a little bit better and when you’re on the road it’s a little bit harder. … We want to continue to be competitive and make sure our spirit is in the right spot. You can’t always control the outcome, but we need to make sure we’re approaching it the right way and giving ourselves a chance every time we step on the floor.”

The Jackrabbits (10-6, 1-0) and Tommies (12-5, 2-0) hold the top two spots in the Summit League. The two teams are also both in the top 110 of the NCAA NET rankings as UST is 98th and SDSU 108th.

Henderson said the Summit League is showing that it’s not a conference that is at the bottom of the country anymore.

“We have great coaches in this league and they do a great job of recruiting and bringing in players and being competitive. When you look at the analytics, and I’m not a huge analytics guy, but you look at the NET rankings and the KenPom rankings and all of that stuff, our numbers are way up from where they were the last couple of years. Give credit to our entire league. We’ve been asked to get better and better and I think that’s exactly what we’ve done,” Henderson said.

This is UST’s fourth season of a five-year transition period from Division III to Division I. Johnny Tauer, who is in his 14th season leading the Tommies, has increased UST’s win total in each of the past three seasons. In their first year in Division I they went 13-20 and the past two seasons they’ve posted records of 19-14 and 20-13.

UST was the first program in the modern era to make the jump directly from Division III to Division I. The Tommies leading scorer this season is junior guard Miles Barnstable. The Division III transfer from Wisconsin-Whitewater is averaging 14.6 points per game.

Barnstable is one of many Division III players that have had success for the Tommies over the past four seasons. Henderson said the players on UST have had a lot of success during the transition because of how good Tauer’s coaching staff is.

“I think [Tauer] is very comfortable with what they want and how they want to play. He’s been there and has been a Tommie for his whole life. He knows what is going to be successful there and he knows the type of kid that they need to get and he goes and finds them. He’s not worried about who else is recruiting them or what kind of [recruiting] star they have or what they’ve necessarily done in the past. He knows what he wants and is comfortable with what he wants. … It has been impressive there, what he’s done, and I know we’re excited to play there on Wednesday,” Henderson said.

Henderson used the non-conference portion of his schedule to figure out some of his rotations. He’s gone with the same starting lineup in 14 of the 16 games. That lineup included freshmen guards Owen Larson and Joe Sayler, sophomore guard Kalen Garry, junior forward Matthew Mors and senior center Oscar Cluff.

Freshmen Stoney Hadnot and Jaden Jackson have usually been the first two players off of the bench, while freshmen forwards Damon Wilkinson and William Whorton have seen more minutes lately. Senior transfer guard Issac Lindsey has also seen more minutes after coming back from injury.

Henderson said he believes that he is getting closer to getting his rotation settled now that the Jacks are heading into the meat of their conference schedule.

“I think we’re getting a lot closer, to be honest,” Henderson said. “We’ve played guys at different spots and at different times. Whether they’re first off the bench or second or third off the bench. We’ve been fairly consistent with our starting lineup and I think that helps. You just want guys to understand what it may feel like.

“You don’t like surprises and stuff like that. You have to make tough decisions. We have great players in this program and you want what’s best for every one of them, but you can only play a certain number of guys. So, I do think we’re getting closer to the point where that’s getting settled in.”

The Jacks and Tommies are scheduled to tip off at 8 p.m. You can watch the game on Midco Sports Network or listen to it on AM 570 WNAX. The Jacks will then head to Omaha on Saturday to take on the Mavericks at 1 p.m.