South Dakota Coyotes (0-0, 0-0)

vs.

Texas Tech Red Raiders (0-0, 0-0)

Preview:

  Game Day Stat: Courtesy of the fabulous website, Statsheet, you have the player impact for the 2008-2009 basketball team in a nice and neat chart. I'm going to make a serious effort to start embedding these as much as possible this year.

  Player Focus: South Dakota's Tyler Cain (6-8/235) was picked to be his conference's player of the year (Great West Conference) and has had quite a career at USD. Cain has the school record of career blocks, shot over 66% for the year last year, averaged over 11 boards, 15 points and 2.5 assists for the year last year. To say that Cain does it all for USD would be an understatement.  Also to watch is G Louie Krogman, who averaged a little over 12 points a game and G/F Roman Gentry, another 12 point a game scorer.

  Notable Note: USD head coach Dave Boots has been coaching at South Dakota for 22 years and is very good at his job. Last year was the first year for USD to transition to NCAA Division I status and all boots did was lead his team to a 20-9 records. Over the course of his 22 years at USD, Boots is 443-172.  I don't care where you coach, that's pretty impressive.  I'm hoping like hell that Pat Knight has fully warned his crew that South Dakota is likely going to be a well-coached team. 

Needs Repair:  The big focus of the off-season for the Red Raiders has been that the team defense needs to be remedied.  My hope is that players that exhibit effort on defense receive minutes and playing time and those that do not or refuse to show effort will see a decrease in minutes.  In college basketball, or really any sport, minutes on the playing field/surface are the only commodity that a coach has that can help a player.  Pat Knight has made it clear that the team is focused on defense and I hope we see that play out over the course of the season. 

GO RAIDERS . . .