Jan. 4—MITCHELL — It’s the standard for so many sports teams these days.
Go 1-0 every time out.
Dakota Wesleyan University women’s basketball subscribes to that and it’s working for the Tigers this season.
“I just tell the kids we’re going to keep taking one game at a time in this conference,” DWU coach Jason Christensen said. “You hear 1-0 all the time but that’s what we need to do. That’s all we can do.”
DWU is 11-3 overall with five straight wins and a 5-2 mark in road games so far. The Tigers also played tough last weekend at NCAA Division I North Dakota State in an exhibition game, which the Bison won 64-55 despite 26 DWU takeaways on defense.
The flip to the new year is not a new start in Great Plains Athletic Conference play. In the 12-team league, more than one-third of the league games are already in the books, with the halfway point just two weeks away.
It’s already tough and well-contested territory at the top of the standings. No. 1 Dordt is 8-0 on the season in the GPAC, followed by a four-team pileup for slots 2-through-5 in the standings. Briar Cliff, Dakota Wesleyan and Northwestern are all tied at 6-2, with Morningside a half-game back at 6-3 in fifth place.
Things can change quickly in the GPAC. Concordia was ranked No. 5 in the country in the NAIA top-25 on Nov. 27 and the Bulldogs were 5-2 at that point. Concordia left Mitchell on Thursday night with a 7-6 overall record, with four losses in that span, all to GPAC teams.
Christensen said it was a topic of conversation with Concordia coach Drew Olson prior to the team’s game on Thursday, with how deep the conference is. Olson is the conference’s representative on the NAIA’s Area Ranking Committee, of which there are six in the country. Each will meet later this month and throughout the remainder of the season to send in a list of the top teams in their region of the country. The regional input is a guide for the national selection committee that picks the 64 NAIA tournament teams.
“We both feel we have eight teams in the GPAC that can be in the national tournament,” Christensen said. “Will we get that? I don’t know but that’s why you’ve got to be ready to play night in and night out. But that seventh or eighth team might not get in, so everyone is going to be battling.”
To that point, the GPAC had six national qualifiers of the 64 last season, including DWU, which reached the round of 16 as a No. 7 seed in its quarter of the bracket.
There’s plenty of tough opponents still ahead for DWU. College of Saint Mary is first on Sunday at the Corn Palace, followed by games at Northwestern, hosting Hastings and at Morningside in the next three games, then a rivalry game at Mount Marty on Jan. 18. DWU has three ranked wins already to its name this season, all at home.
As the season also winds down, there’s potential home court to play for. Sixteen host sites are picked for the first two rounds of the NAIA tournament under the 64-team format, something DWU has not yet done since the move to a single NAIA division. The better teams play through January and February, the better chance they have to be picked as a possible home site.
“I haven’t brought it up,” Christensen said about potentially playing at home. “But I know every game we can win, it helps our chances. I would love to play games at the Corn Palace in March.”
Thursday was a breakout game for Corsica native Avery Broughton, who had a career-best 22 points for the Tigers in the win over Concordia.
The first-year Tiger and University of South Dakota transfer continues to fit in nicely for DWU, Christensen said. The sophomore has averaged 11.8 points per game and was 8-for-10 from the field on Thursday, including 4-of-5 on 3-pointers. Broughton is also tied for the conference lead in blocked shots with 18 in 14 games played.
“She’s coming out and every game she plays, she’s getting better,” Christensen said. “She’s starting to get a little more comfortable, and we’re working on some things with her in practice. She’s a kid that her ceiling is really high, and you’re going to see Avery constantly keep improving.”
Wagner native and sophomore forward Emma Yost leads the team in scoring with 15.2 points per game, while Rylee Rosenquist has 13.1 points per game as a junior. Along with sophomore Shalayne Nagel at 8.7 points per game, three of DWU’s top four scorers are sophomores.
More notes on the Tigers’ basketball teams
* As of Friday, the Tiger men rank No. 6 nationally in fewest turnovers per game at 9.1 per contest.
* DWU men’s basketball also doesn’t give up much territory in rebounding. They allow 28.8 rebounds per game on average, which ranks sixth-best in the NAIA in opponent rebounding.
* Tampa Scott IV ranks third in the GPAC in free throw shooting at 90.2%, while Randy Rosenquist Jr. ranks No. 4 in the conference in steals with 35, just one off the three-way conference lead at 36.
* On the women’s side, Yost is fifth in the GPAC in free throw shooting at 83.8%.
* A new RPI ranking will be released on Monday, Jan. 6, but both DWU teams ranked highly in the last version released in mid-December. The DWU men were at No. 25 with a strength of schedule at 29th out of 224 teams in the country. The DWU women were at No. 33, with a strength of schedule at No. 43 out of 227 teams. The metrics are available to help the national selection committees pick the 64 teams for the national bracket.
