Naters Gonna Nate, Part 542

I thought everything had basically been accomplished by SDSU point guard Nate Wolters.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

After a career-high, school-record and NCAA season-high 53 points Thursday against Fort Wayne in a 80-74 win, he's basically proved that the rest of the season is his for the taking.

I'll let the SDSU game recap take some of the details here:

Wolters scored 38 of his points in the second half, one more than the entire IPFW team, finishing the night 17-of-28 shooting overall, 9-of-14 from 3-point range and 10-of-11 from the free throw line.

"They were sagging off of me and my felt pretty good tonight, I was able to knock a couple down and just got into a little bit of a rhythm," Wolters said. "It's a good accomplishment, but it's a big win for us, we had to have it. We knew that they were gonna come out and play hard, they played tough, but we were able to put together a big second half and pull away."

The 53 points not only tops his previous career-high of 36, but breaks the SDSU single-game mark of 44 points, set by Dave Thomas against Coe College on March 10, 1973. His nine 3-pointers tops his previous high of five, set in the season-opener at Alabama, and breaks the SDSU mark of eight, a mark set by Jason Sempsrott on Jan. 12, 1996 vs. North Dakota State, and by Randy Suarez against Augustana on Feb. 7, 1987.

Of course, he's good but the ability to just take over is a skill that few players have. Fort Wayne is one of those places where the building is pretty dead and he made his performance count on a night when the Jacks needed it badly. I'll be curious to see what happens at Oakland Saturday in a must-win ballgame. But as Wolters put it, every game has been a must-win since about mid-December. The Jacks share 1st place with Western Illinois after a three-point loss for NDSU against the Golden Grizzlies tonight.

Earlier this year, I said that I didn't think he would score in bunches at home on a Collegian postgame video. I was wrong because he went for 29 the next game but tonight validates the claim some because I did say that he would have his big games on the road. This will qualify there. At the end of the day, the Jacks need him more on the road because they play much better as a unit at home. 

Wolters is one of two reasons SDSU is the favorite to get back to the NCAA Tournament, along with having the Summit League tournament in Sioux Falls. I would have to say that he gives the Jackrabbits a great chance of getting a win in the Big Dance. He's that good but I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know.

Some of the media from tonight. Check it out as well:

Nate Wolters erupts for 53 points, most by any Division I player this season (Yahoo).

South Dakota State's Nate Wolters scores 53, highest total this season  (ESPN)

Night Court: Nate Wolters gives CBB most points in a game since '09 (CBSSports.com)

Goodbye, 'Roos.

I was going to lead with this but Nate Wolters did his thing, so the Kansas City to the Western Athletic Conference gets bumped. The Kangaroos will be out of the Summit after this year. There's a lot of facets to this, so we'll get to this in bulletpoints.

• At best, this is a lateral move. There's only one way to buy this and that's if the Kangaroos were the third or fourth best basketball team in the conference and were consistently on the cusp of making it to the NCAA Tournament. That's just not the case because their men's basketball program, which should be marquee program for a non-football school, is awful and poorly-managed. 
• Obviously, UMKC has a tough time reading the tea leaves here. Of the nine current members in the conference, SEVEN are leaving the WAC by July 1, 2014. There's a reason everyone else is leaving and they clearly don't see it the same way everyone else does. Denver just left the conference. Was nobody in Kansas City paying attention?
• What's left is not Murderer's Row: California State University, Bakersfield; Chicago State University; Grand Canyon University; New Mexico State University; Seattle University, The University of Texas-Pan American and Utah Valley University.
• The WAC is not anymore of an airplane league than the Summit. Let me know if you find any cheap flights to Las Cruces, N.M.
• They are centrally-located in the Summit. The Kangaroos will be the second-most eastern school in the WAC now. More proof geography doesn't matter anymore in conference realignment.
• How does UMKC not address the media with a press conference today. They really don't know what they're doing, do they?
• People need to get over this idea that the Summit is just garbage as a basketball league. It's not spectacular but it's not like it's high Division II either. See the Wolters notes above. Frank Gaines, Travis Bader, Ceola Clark III, Marshall Bjorklund are all great players. I know that Denver is decent this year (Ha, they're coming to the Summit, New Mexico State made The Dance last year and Utah State is usually good.) Two of those teams are leaving and NMSU will try to get out at any moment. Perception is everything and people will likely see that the WAC is a fraud, far from where it was years ago.
• I would be surprised if the Summit disintegrates, which is what is posed here by Kansas City Star writer Blair Kerkhoff. Certainly, Oakland to the Horizon is a real possibility. As it stands, it doesn't make sense for Omaha to leave the Summit right now because they are in the I-29 pact with the Dakota schools. Also, I don't buy that the WAC is looking at SIU-Edwardsville either. 
• Also thrown out there is SDSU and NDSU looking at the Missouri Valley. That is probably a dream scenario for NDSU for sure but SDSU has a lot going for them in the Summit. The conference tourney is in their backyard and they are having great success. The Valley is a basketball league for sure. However, if the offer is there (it's clearly a step up), how do you turn it down? This would only happen with moves by Creighton and Evansville to the Catholic 7 and the Horizon, respectively.

Lots to chew on there. 

One last time

I'll be heading to St. Cloud Friday for the final WCHA regular season series between St. Cloud State and Minnesota for the weekend showdown, which should be a great series. The Huskies are No. 1 in the conference and the Gophers are No. 3 but it's the Maroon and Gold are No. 1 in the Pairwise rankings (which basically decide who gets into the NCAA Tournament) in what is the final season for college hockey's best league as we know it. I'll miss it and I will probably wax poetic about the WCHA on Monday. 

The Floating Capacity of Erv Huether Field

This week has been an exciting one for those who follow SDSU athletics and most importantly, those who avidly support Jackrabbits baseball. David Lane, a former SDSU player in the 1980s and his wife Shari, made a generous gift of $200,000 in late 2011 to move the grandstand project at the Jacks' home, Erv Huether Field, towards being a legitimate site for Division I college baseball.

The new grandstand is very nice, featuring seats behind home plate that are numbered and resemble the blue seats from the Metrodome and chairback bleachers on the outside sections of the seating. According to the SDSU athletic department, the new structure seats 600 spectators.

Believe me, I like it a lot. I mean there’s a press box for crying out loud. It’s way better than the previously used press tent that had the football sideline heaters in it for warmth over the last few years. I have a legitimate seat and that’s awesome. But in some research for an unrelated baseball story for The Collegian, I noticed what has been used for as capacity figure for The Erv and the discrepancies in its short time.

First, we should recap the history of baseball at SDSU and its facilities. SDSU played at the old Erv Huether Field from 1958 until 2001, when it was built over as part of the school’s Master Plan (that Master Plan, let me tell you what). The stadium was a relic and located on the north side of the HPER Center, with the stadium’s press box built into the side of the building and a small set of bleachers behind home plate.

From 2001 to 2007, SDSU played at Brookings’ Bob Shelden Field in the center of the town. The stadium is solid but only for a town team or as high school field and lacked the atmosphere that SDSU wanted for Division I baseball. So the Jackrabbits began working on a new on-campus baseball field, which they propped up for the 2008 season.

And propped up they did, with no more than a field with a with a concrete backstop, a pair of basic dugouts, symmetrical outfield dimensions, a blue outfield fence and batting cages down each foul line. Sufficient but never spectacular.

My main reference for the capacity of the stadium is the SDSU media guides that are still on the athletic website, starting in 2008. In both the 2008 and 2009 guides, the capacity is listed at 1,000. Now, the Jacks just had a pair of basic bleachers behind home plate, which is far too little to seat 1,000 people. If we’re counting all of the room for fans to stand around the backstop, then you could say 1,000 was possible but it wasn't realistic. SDSU has never sniffed 1,000 fans for a D-I baseball game in Brookings and at the end of the Jacks' time in Division II, there were times where no attendance was reported or the number came in around 100. They drew over 1,000 when they played Minnesota in Sioux Falls in the mid-2000s but have never been close on-campus.


The 2010 guide cut the capacity in half, officially down to 500. Probably a wise move considering the Jackrabbits had only drawn a maximum of 311 fans (see chart) in the new park’s first two years. The same held true in 2011 and the Jackrabbits had been guessing that the new grandstand — which at this point looked like it would never arrive — would eventually seat 500 fans. Then the Lane family, among other SDSU baseball supporters, came forward for the project to become a reality.

For the first two games in 2012 with the new seats, SDSU saw 158 and 257 people come through its (invisible) turnstiles for Mount Marty and Minnesota, respectively. Now at 600 seats, the Jackrabbits should be set for a while as far as seating goes and that seemed about right, with half of the seats spoken for during the Jacks' 3-1 win over the Gophers.

Realistically, it needs improvements yet to really make the place feel like a ballpark, instead of a baseball diamond on the north end of campus with seats behind home plate. While it is better than anything SDSU has ever had, it probably still won’t be enough for the Jackrabbits to host the Summit League Baseball Tournament, something they did do in 2011 but at Sioux Falls Stadium. In the Jacks’ four games in Sioux Falls, there were crowds of 1,493, 1,138, 863 and 690 for SDSU’s games against NDSU and Oral Roberts in games one and two and then the same teams again in games three and four.

The new seats aren’t going to be able to hold crowds like that and SDSU probably wouldn’t draw almost 1,500 fans in Brookings anyway compared to the much larger Sioux Falls. That’s not the only reason of course. Brookings is relatively small in population, the press box is not large enough, and the concessions and bathrooms aren’t up to snuff for the conference’s premiere event. All of those facts trumped by the biggest negative for Erv Huether Field with the Summit League’s season finale: No lights.

All in all, still a nice place to watch a game and still a step up when all things are considered. Again, no complaints from me. This was a long time coming for SDSU and its baseball community.

One final note: The 2008 guide also said that the Erv Huether Field grandstand would be finished by 2009.

Oh well, right? This will do.

Turning Over the Turnover Problem

I've started to dabble in looking at the possession-based statistics for both SDSU basketball teams and I'll share a few of the findings over the next week in preparation for the Summit League Tournament, starting March 3.

There have been a few trends that I have caught but the one I would like to focus on today is turnovers. Simply, both teams have vastly improved their ability to protect the ball since the beginning of the season. Feel free to attribute some of the season's second half success to playing Summit League teams but the Jacks have been consistently better.


The men's chart is on the left; women's on the right. (The first column is the number of scoring possessions or number of possessions that resulted in at least one point. The second is turnovers and third is turnover rate, which is the number of possessions that resulted in a turnover.)

 



The men have been better at taking care of the ball longer but they have made considerable progress in their ability to take care of the ball since Summit League play has started. To regularly be in the single-digits when it comes to turnovers is quite impressive. Of note, SDSU enters Thursday night's game against Western Illinois ranked 12th in turnovers per game, 17th in assist-turnover ratio and 38th in turnover margin nationally. It helps to have a top point guard who is an assist machine and appears to be allergic to turnovers at times in Nate Wolters. The standout performance is likely the one that everyone has pointed to this year when SDSU had five turnovers in their dominating win over Washington in December, with last week's pants-ing (courtesy of Travis Kriens) of NDSU not far behind.

I've long been critical of the way that the women's team turns the ball over, most notably the 38 turnovers last year ago at Middle Tennessee State. Even early in the season the squad had trouble taking care of the ball but things have changed. The Jackrabbits have still had issues against high-pressure teams like UMKC and Oral Roberts but for the most part, SDSU has improved its ball security. (With those two teams in the No. 2 and No. 3 seed slots for the Summit Tourney, that will be something to watch. SDSU has to take care of the ball against those teams.) Much like the rest of the Jacks' game, some of their best numbers in the turnover department have come against NDSU. More consistency at the point guard spot through Jill Young and Gabby Boever has helped the Jackrabbits decrease the one flaw in their otherwise solid game.

One more nugget: The SDSU women average 69.89 possessions a game for the season or 69.9 for short. That is the exact average number of possessions in a game for college basketball. For a team that likes to run, the numbers bear out that the Jackrabbits are pretty average when it comes to pace of play.