Ryan Pravato of College Fast Break is the RTC correspondent for the Summit League.
North Dakota St. (2-0) 5-3
The big story for the Bison so far is their 5’11 point guard Ben Woodside.
The performance of note (I’m sure you all have heard about it by now) came against the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks. North Dakota State lost by 1 in a triple OT, but Woodside scored the most points by a DI player since Arizona State’s Eddie House put up 61 in 2000. Having seen Woodside play live before, the outburst did not surprise me. If you haven’t been lucky enough to watch Woodside play before, think of him as a mix between a Chris Quinn streaky shooter type and as a sneaky drive to the basket and flip it up Tony Parker type player.
Ben is one of the few Summit League players that has a fighting chance at a NBA future.
Anyways, Ben scored 60 points, 30 of them were from the charity stripe. And even more impressive was the fact Woodside only made 2 three pointers.
I can’t let this other parcel of info go untold. NDSU senior center Lucas Moormann scored 10 in that Stephen F. Austin game. This is worth mentioning because Moormann only had scored a total of 10 points in NDSU’s 6 prior games. And by the look of Moormann’s career stats at NDSU, he’s gotten progressively worse year by year.
Thanks, Lucas, we’ll hear from you, uh, probably never again.
Southern Utah (2-0) 3-6
This transfer laden team has had quite an interesting start to the season. Their only 2 DI wins have come against Summit opponents. They have lost to Seattle Pacific (DII) by 10, but only lost to Florida by 14 and a decent Boise St. team by 3. I’m not sure how to guage this team. One thing I can say: losing to Southern Utah will probably go under the bad loss category. However if they keep winning conference games, I’ll rethink that notion. And I’ll start talking about how bad the Summit league is. Stay tuned.
The others…
IUPUI nearly knocked off ranked Arizona State on the 14th. Even though the game was held in Arizona, it was hardly a raucous atmosphere for IUPUI to endure. Attendance was N/A, meaning, it barely broke the double digit mark. IUPUI freshman guard Alex Young scored 19. Keep an eye on this cat. He’s averaging 14.7 ppg and 4.2 boards. He’s just a baby. Former IUPUI stud George Hill averaged 10.7 ppg and 4.5 boards his freshmen campaign. Head coach Ron Hunter is doing some nice recruiting over at IUPUI. Alex looks like another real good mid-major find.
Despite being 2-7, Oral Roberts has improved mightily over the past few weeks. They got a nice conference win over rival South Dakota State in an atmosphere akin to a Charlotte Bobcats – Golden State Warriors rivalry game. Even better was the performance they had on ESPN2 against the UNC Tar Heels (Dec.13th). Losing by 16 to the best team bar none in the country is no easy feat. In fact, and this blew my mind, Oral Roberts outscored UNC by four in the 2nd half. I don’t care if the small religious school got overlooked by UNC or not, outscoring UNC in a half is fantastic. Something not fantastic? Robert Jarvis’ clown show of heaving 17 threes. We Summit League types know full well you want to stand out to the pro scouts, but dude, don’t be surprised if Poland decides to renege their interest in you. I watched most of that game and you JACKED up at least two thirds-ish of those threes. Put the team first, it’ll will be worth it in the long run.
Not sure when Oakland’s Derick Nelson will return, but as of late it hasn’t mattered much. The Grizzly offense has finally gelled to the point where Johnathon Jones isn’t forced to create a shot on his own with less than 10 seconds on the shot clock seemingly every other play (although it worked against Oregon). Erik Kangas is finally expanding his game a little by using his sneaky quickness to create shots for himself instead of always shooting threes (I’m not complaining), Keith Benson is, for the most part, acting like he gives a fudge out there on the court, and freshman Drew Maynard is starting to understand the finer points of moving your feet on defense and not falling for every pump fake. We’ll see where this team is really at after they play Michigan and Michigan State in the coming days.