The Northern Sun conference basketball season opened in earnest last night with doubleheaders at Concordia-St. Paul and Southwest State, and other games scattered across the upper midwest. (OK, 4 women’s teams from the Dakotas played one another last Thursday.) Only the Southwest State Mustangs swept their doubleheader last night for a combined record of 11-1 on the season so far. (OK, Sioux Falls won a pair from Augustana, the women last Thursday, the men last night.)
Southwest State
Southwest State was picked to finish 4th in both men’s and women’s play, and so far both are playing like contenders–the Southwest State men are 5-1 with a 76-56 win over Wayne State last night. The men also have an 81-68 win over Minnesota State Mankato earlier in the season that was for some reason chalked up as a non-conference game. Coach Brad Bigler is in his 16th season at Southwest, and last year he won at least 19 games and 14 in the conference for the 5th time, and got an NCAA bid for the 4th time, They’ve been led by 6-7 sophomore Aeron Stevens (Plainview), who is averaging 19 ppg-7 reb-2 asts while shooting 49%. But, last night it was Steve Kramer, a 6-5 soph from Iowa, with 18 pts-8 reb-2 blks. Their other double figure scorers–either last night or for the season–are all sophomores and juniors, so the future looks bright at Southwest.
The Southwest State women also defeated Wayne 75-71 as Peyton Blandin, a senior from Farmington, poured in 27 points while Audrey Swanson, a 5-11 junior from Waconia added 19. Unlike the men, this is very much a senior team (well, 3 of the top 6) so coach Tom Webb, now in his 9th season, is looking to make hay while the sun shines. But, at the moment, I’m hoping for word from coach Webb regarded Bri Stoltzman, the 5-8 senior guard from Mankato, pre-season NSIC player of the year, and leading scorer with 18 ppg on 59% shooting. You know, that Bri Stoltzman. She played just 4 minutes last night and spent the 2nd half on the bench in awalking boot. So I’m wondering what the news out of Marshall is going to be. And, while the men can and should contend for the NSIC title, the women face a much tougher defending national champion Mankato women’s team than the defending champion Mankato men. And, the women had a much tougher go of it with Wayne last night. (The Wayne men were picked for 12th, the women for 13th.) Stoltzman’s absence undoubtedly had something to do with that.
Concordia St.Paul and Winona State
Nevertheless, life remains good for basketball fans at Southwest State. It’s more of a mixed bag at Concordia-St. Paul and at Winona State, who split their doubleheader at CSP. The Winona State men kind of surprised the CSP men (well, they surprised me) 83-73. Winona was picked for 11th in the NSIC, CSP 8th, but both are now 5-1 overall. Winona got 24 points (3 more than his season average) from Luke Haertle, a 6-3 soph from Wisconsin, and 13 each from Connor Drew and Isaiah Thompson, who hail from somewhere in Iowa and Michigan, respectively. Honestly, Winona State is barely a Minnesota team, but nevermind that now. Concordia as usual was led by 6-0 senior guard Antwan Kimmons, from Tartan, who scored 29, one more than is average. I don’t know if either of these teams will contend for the title, but they will score some points.
The CSP women, on the other hand, might be able to contend. They were picked for 3rd and routed Winona 78-48 after taking a 54-20 halftime lead. Lindsey Becher led a balanced scoring attack with 18 points with 6 boards and 3 blocks, while Lydia Haack, Leah Dengerud and Mikayla Kanenwisher all scored 10 and Megan Gamble added 10 boards. The CSP and Southwest State women are each 6-0 in the early going while Mankato and St. Cloud have one loss each.
Elsewhere Around the Northern Sun
UM Crookston split its doubleheader with Minot, the UMC men losing 83-52, while the women won 70-63. Emna Miller was her usual incredible self, the 5-1 junior from St. Michael-Albertville scoring 26 points with 5 rebounds and 3 assists.
Meanwhile Minnesota State Mankato traveled to UM Duluth for a single-header, that is a women’s game. Mankato won 82-64 easily as Destinee Bursch, Hannah Herzig, Ava Stier and Mackenzie Schweim all scored in double figures. Mankato is without Natalie Bremer right now and we don’t have any info about an injury or whatever. But you should know that Bremer and Stoltzman both were the NSIC player of the week in November, and so from now on take your player of the week award somewhere else. Duluth got 19 points and 10 boards from Lexi Karlen off the bench
Recalibrate?
We had Minnesota State, no. not that Minnesota State but, rather, Minnesota State Moorhead as our pre-season fave among the men. The Dragons are 5-1 and I don’t see any reason to change horses at this point. I had Mankato 2, UMD 3 and Southwest State 4, Well UMD and Southwest are 5-1, Mankato is 2-4. So I would move UMD and Southwest up to 2 and 3.
Among the women, I had Mankato #1 and they’re now 4-1. I had CSP and Southwest at #3 and #4 behind Northern State. Northern is now 3-2, CSP and Southwest, as noted, are 6-0. I’ll stick with Mankato but move our Minnesota teams up, CSP to #2 and Southwest to #3, pending further news about Bri Stoltzman.
