VERMILLION, S.D.—South Dakota guard
A.J. Plitzuweit scored a game-high 33 points on 9-of-11 shooting in leading the Coyotes to an 85-77 win against Lipscomb Wednesday inside the Sanford Coyote Sports Center.
It made
Eric Peterson a winner in his first home game as the Coyotes' head coach and evened South Dakota's record at 1-1 on the young season. Lipscomb, out of the Atlantic Sun Conference, was playing its season opener.
Calling Plitzuweit's feat remarkable would be a gross understatement. He was making his return to the same court in which he suffered a gruesome leg injury 20 months ago. An injury that required extensive rehabilitation and forced him to miss the entire 2021-22 campaign. If you watched him play Wednesday for the first time, you would have never thought he left.
Plitzuweit's performance ranked right up there with his pair of 37-point games in his first season with South Dakota in early 2021. He was 5-of-6 from 3-point range, made mid-range jumpers and scored at the rim. He was 10-of-10 from the free-throw line. He had five assists, two steals and no turnovers. He played 35 minutes 48 hours after logging 27 minutes in Madison, Wisconsin.
"Obviously the story is A.J. coming back, right?" said Peterson. "Really proud of him. There's a lot of guys that maybe wouldn't come back from an injury like that and just kind of cash it in and say 'hey, I had a great career. I'm going to finish school and move on.' I get emotional about this because I saw how hard he's worked to get back.
"Everybody wants to give you your game ball when you win your first game. I couldn't think of anybody better to give it to than A.J. Him coming back from that is something I'll never forget in my career."
The win itself was far from easy. Lipscomb features one of the most talented big men in the country in fifth-year senior Ahsan Asadullah, and although his stat line won't tell the story, he made an impact, especially early on when the Bisons jumped out to a 16-4 lead. Asadullah was forced to pass out of constant double teams and that helped Lipscomb knock down seven 3-pointers in the first half, most of them wide open looks.
But those looks dried up in the second half and Asadullah never truly found a rhythm offensively. He was 2-of-7 from the field for four points. He did have six rebounds, five assists and three blocked shots.
"That was a massive effort," said Peterson. "In the second half, we changed the way we doubled the post, and it was an adjustment we threw on the fly and our guys handled it really, really well. When we got stops, you probably saw me give the baseball wave rounding third. Just push the ball and attack them, and that's where I think the game really flipped."
Lipscomb led by as many as 15 in the first half and 42-35 at the break. That lead held until
Max Burchill made a pair of free throws with 9:11 remaining that tied the game at 57-57. The Coyotes' first lead came moments later. Plitzuweit and
Tasos Kamateros buried back-to-back 3's that ignited an 11-0 run that put South Dakota ahead 69-59 with a little more than four minutes to play.
Kamateros had 17 points on 7-of-11 shooting and led all players with eight boards. The Coyotes also got 11 points and six rebounds from
Damani Hayes and eight points from
Mason Archambault. South Dakota was 10-of-18 from downtown and 19-of-21 from the charity stripe.
Lipscomb got 20 points from Will Pruitt who made three 3-pointers and was 6-of-8 from the field. Jacob Ognacevic provided instant offense off the Bisons' bench with 18 points in 20 minutes of action. Lipscomb was 3-of-9 from long range in the second half after torching the nets in the first.
South Dakota stays home to host Dakota State in a 5 p.m. tip Saturday. It is the Coyotes' final tune-up before taking on Mississippi State next Thursday to start the Fort Myers Tip-Off.
