The University of South Dakota women’s basketball team won the Women’s National Invitation Tournament championship over the weekend. The Coyotes were 71-to-65 winners over Florida Gulf Coast University Saturday, in front of more than seven thousand people at the Dakota Dome in Vermillion. Senior Nicole Seekamp was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, and was one of two Coyotes on the All-Tournament Team. Seekamp was granted another year of eligibility by the N-C-Double-A just before the season started.
Seekamp reflects, “Oh, this is unreal—I was saying to somebody else, at this time, I didn’t know if I was even going to be back here, and then to be here, I never would have thought that this was going to be on our schedule, you know.
"But being here, and being champions, and to do it with these seniors and this bunch of girls and these coaches, it’s just unreal and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
The Coyotes won six straight games to earn the tournament championship. U-S-D Head Coach Amy Williams says her players had a successful post-season by doing what they do best.
“We’ve talked about this," the coach admits—"sometimes teams have a tendency when they get into the post season run like this, to make adjustments and kinda do more than they’ve done. And we’ve really talked long and hard about how we don’t have to do anything other than what has got us to this point. And that’s rebounding—and that’s, you know, sharing the basketball, and that assist-to-turnover ratio is gonna be critical, and I’m just proud that we were able to stay locked in to what’s gotten us to this point.”
The Coyotes finish the season with 32 wins and six losses. Saturday’s game was the final basketball game in the Dakota Dome. The U-S-D men’s and women’s basketball teams, as well as the women’s volleyball program, will move to a new arena in Vermillion next season.
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