SIOUX FALLS, S.D.—No matter how Tuesday's Summit League Tournament championship game between the University of South Dakota and South Dakota State ended on Tuesday, the Coyotes were going to have to wait for word to arrive next Monday regarding their immediate future.
 
A loss to SDSU would not have erased the rewards that came with a 16-0 Summit League regular season. Nor would it have taken away an unprecedented 15-week run in the USA Today Coaches Poll.
 
This was because of a non-conference schedule that included wins over major-college programs Utah, Missouri, Ohio State and Creighton, in addition to a 13-point loss to top-rated South Carolina.
 
The program had crafted – and the players and staff had succeeded in delivering – on a mission to establish resiliency. This would apply to surviving the minutes when things weren't going quite right, and also the games where things weren't going quite right.
 
Going into the Summit League Tournament championship game, the numbers said the Coyotes had already done all the heavy lifting they were going to need to do to advance to the NCAA tournament.  
The numbers also said the Coyotes had never beaten South Dakota State in a Summit League Tournament championship.
 
So when the Jackrabbits, who were 5-0 against USD in tournament title games at the PREMIER Center, were leading the Coyotes 32-27 at half and 47-45 with 1:43 to play in the third quarter, USD could look back to November and December in a couple different ways. They knew that what they'd done to this point had pretty much locked-up an NCAA berth, but more importantly, they could draw on those experiences in this specific game.
 
"It's been a game that eluded us for a really long time," said senior Summit League Player of the Year Ciara Duffy. "Winning this tournament – none of us has ever done it. To be able to win our way into the NCAA tournament in a rivalry game was really special."


 
With 8:06 to play, Hannah Sjerven, who earned the tournament MVP award by scoring 15 points and pulling down eight rebounds in the final, scored on a pass from Chloe Lamb to give USD a 49-47 lead.
It wasn't what you'd call a typical game-winner but the Coyotes never trailed again.
 
They also never left the Jacks behind, however, which made for a wild afternoon at the PREMIER Center in front of 7,833 fans that were cheering – or groaning – on every possession.
 
It was an adrenaline-wedged environment that encouraged energy but at the same time made poise a coveted commodity.
 
That made for a nervous bunch of Coyote fans going into halftime. A half-court Jackrabbit heave at the buzzer had nearly gone in that would have given SDSU a 35-27 lead. At the same time, points were coming only with difficulty at the other end.
 
"I had faith in my team the whole way," said Madison McKeever, who hit several big shots in the second half to help secure the win. "We'd been in this position twice in my last three years. For us we'd had all that time in the gym and all that time in the preseason – I had faith in my team the whole way we were going to come out with this win."


 
It was far from automatic. During halftime, the message from Coach Dawn Plitzuweit was about encouraging calmness.
 
Albeit, a very tough version of calmness.
 
"At the times where it looked like we could go one direction or the other and start to panic, we didn't do that," Plitzuweit said. "The young ladies continued to battle."
 
Things were not as bad as they might have seemed, Plitzuweit was saying. Chill out a little bit and keep rolling.
 
"We battled – I thought we played really hard in the first half," she said. "We were winning all the hustle stats."
 
Sjerven, who pulled down five offensive rebounds, took it all in.
 
"Chloe Lamb pulled me aside," Sjerven said. "She said 'It's time to toughen up.' And she was right. And that was what worked for me."
 
And everyone else.
 
"When I was coaching at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay with Kevin Borseth many, many years ago, his message was that we need to schedule aggressively in our non-conference because ultimately we had to win our conference tournament," Plitzuweit said. "You had to be prepared for that moment. You have to be ready for different styles, you have to understand the intensity and be ready for that moment."
 
A year ago, USD got into the NCAA postseason without winning the Summit Tournament. It was an alternate route that appeared at times to be the way the Coyotes were going to get in again.
 
The pivotal moments, however – those times where panic might have gripped a lesser team – were not part of the picture. Nor were they part of the season.
 
"I'm just really, really proud of our young ladies and how they competed with a great deal of poise," Plitzuweit said. "South Dakota State played really hard and really well. I thought it was a great basketball game and our young ladies weathered the storm."