McKeever on the opportunities gained and lost

Madison McKeever is still at home in Erskine, Minnesota. She made the five-hour drive from Sioux Falls with her family a week ago after playing a crucial role in South Dakota’s Summit League Tournament win against South Dakota State.

The notifications on her phone during that drive were so persistent that at some point, she had to put it away. Coyote fans already know why that was the case, but a deeper dive will be fun nonetheless.

It was McKeever who reminded us to breathe during that championship battle with the Jacks. And she did it not just with her defense, which over four seasons compiled the fourth-most steals in program history, but with some of the biggest shots of the game.

There was the (left-handed?) shot she made in the paint that was her first bucket and the Coyotes’ only points during the final six minutes of the first half. USD trailed 32-27 at the break, but McKeever tied the game at 35-35 less than four minutes into the third quarter with her first 3-pointer. 

And we breathed. 

When her second 3 splashed through moments later, USD led by five and we breathed some more. And with the outcome still in doubt, it was her left-handed layup out of an SDSU timeout with less than two minutes remaining that provided the first moments of the celebration to come.

If you looked close enough, even McKeever’s reaction to those two third-quarter triples told you even she knew those were big shots for a team, and perhaps a fan base, needing a spark. As she described it, she could almost hear Coyote Nation exhale collectively after that first three went in.

“I wasn’t shooting well right away and some athletes might stop shooting and move the ball more,” said McKeever. “But for me, all that time in the gym from elementary through college prepares you for those shots. You can’t be passive. You can’t be a man standing out there just moving and screening. You have to be a threat. And for me, to finally nail that 3-pointer was huge. It was like ‘okay, we’re back, we’re good.’ And as soon as I made it, you could hear the crowd. I think everyone was a little uptight before then.

“It gave our team that fire to get going again, and I feel like that’s something that I’ve done throughout my four years is to be that fire for my team, mostly on the defensive end, but those moments were pretty awesome. Even though a 5-point lead isn’t a whole lot, now we can just play our basketball, and I think that’s what we did from there on out.”

For McKeever and her senior teammates – Ciara Duffy, Taylor Frederick and Megan Bonar – seeing a sea of red rush the court and cutting down the nets was one of the moments they had waited all season for. Yes, going undefeated in the Summit and earning the right to compete in the NCAA Tournament were goals, but ones the class had achieved in prior seasons. This moment was different.

And perhaps this is worth acknowledging. This class ran the table in the Summit as sophomores. They became the first Summit League program to earn an at-large bid and competed in the NCAA tournament as juniors. Seemingly, the only thing left to cross off was winning an NCAA tournament game. Yet this class and this team never looked ahead to March. They gutted out four tough wins to start the season, went toe-to-toe with the nation’s best in South Carolina, and blasted through the Summit by margins never seen before.

That top-ranked Gamecock team by the way, that beat the Coyotes 73-60 back in December, beat 14 other teams on their home court by an average of 31 points. UCONN fell there 70-52 in February.

Sadly and incredibly, that final goal won’t be achieved. Less than 48 hours after that car ride took her back to Erskine, and a day before McKeever was set to rejoin her teammates for a Friday practice, the decision was made.

“I tried to stay off the phone for awhile because all of this stuff kept getting brought up and I didn’t want to look at what could have happened or what did happen,” said McKeever. “I was praying that we would get to finish our season. We were supposed to come back that Friday before practice and… it was very tough finding the news that we weren’t going to get to come back and finish the season.

“It all happened at once. I think first was a tweet from the NCAA and then I also got a text from Coach P. It was a big message of how proud she was of us, the season. It was a sad message.”

Asked if she wanted to see the NCAA’s brackets, the answer was a firm no. The picture of a path that she would never get to take would only be another punch to the gut.

And then there’s this – McKeever was one of 62 senior women’s basketball players in the nation selected to the ‘So You Want To Be A Coach’ program presented by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. She had earned the right to participate in a three-day workshop April 2-4 in conjunction with the Women’s Final Four in New Orleans.

“I just heard the news that I wouldn’t be able to play basketball and that was tough, but my coach texted me and said I wouldn’t be able to go to the Final Four, and I was like ‘you got to be kidding me.’

“I was super excited for that, especially to experience the Final Four in person, which I’ve never done, would be great, but then to get the opportunity to meet with coaches and learn and get my foot in the door in that coaching career. I was very excited for that and it’s been hard not to get that opportunity.

“But Coach has been very helpful throughout all this news with all of us. What’s our next steps? What are we going to do now? She wants to find a way to bring us back together and celebrate the success we’ve had all year and have that proper goodbye, which I think is very special. But it’s been a tough week.”

The lone consolation is simply the memory of being a catalyst on perhaps the greatest Summit League team in history, a 30-win team that ran the table both during the season and in Sioux Falls, a team that competed with the best and was able to at least dream of playing an NCAA Tournament game or two in Vermillion.

Nineteen consecutive wins by an average of 31 points, a couple of big trophies and a piece of nylon. It will have to do.