South Dakota State Men's Basketball: The Mid-Major Nobody Is Respecting

In the world of college basketball, reputation is everything. 

Whether it's a winning reputation—much like Kansas, North Carolina and Syracuse have—or a losing reputation—much like the New Jersey Institute of Technology has—being consistent helps any team's standing in the public eye.

While discussing a team's potential for success, most "experts" look at each team's past success or failures to determine if they will win or lose throughout the season.

Well, there is one team that is making people realize that looking at the past will not always help you in analyzing their future.

One team in particular that should be getting more respect than they are comes out of a conference that doesn't get much respect itself—the Summit League.

Generally speaking, the Summit League is viewed as a conference full of teams that no other conference wants to touch with a 10-foot pole. 

When you talk about the Summit League, all experts will direct you to Oral Roberts and Oakland. 

Oral Roberts has a long standing tradition of basketball success while Oakland has only just recently become a mainstay powerhouse in the conference, taking home consecutive regular season and conference tournament championships the past two seasons.

While that's all well and good, there is another team in the Summit League causing the rest of the conference, and the rest of the nation for that matter, to take notice.

Of course, I'm talking about South Dakota State.

Their team mascot may be a jackrabbit and only joined the Division I ranks in 2007, but this year's team is no laughing matter.

Just ask Washington Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar and his roster full of future NBA draft picks and highly-touted recruits.

Ask anybody who had the chance to watch the Jacks play in their sub-region of the CBE Classic this past November as they took out Niagara, Sam Houston State and Mercer on consecutive days. 

In fact, ask the highly-profiled Oakland point guard Reggie Hamilton and the Golden Grizzlies.

Anybody who has had the opportunity to watch SDSU's men play basketball over the past month-and-a-half know that this young team needs to be taken seriously.

Sadly, most of the national media that covers college basketball have yet to realize these guys are for real.

Numerous posts about the Jackrabbit's 92-73 upset victory of Washington on December 18th was written off as Washington deciding to take the day off, not taking them as a serious team or just not wanting to play that day.

In actuality, by look at the play-by-play and watching film from the game, you'll notice that Washington did all they could to win the game, but couldn't keep up with this team.

Part of that may have been because they didn't expect to see the lesser-known SDSU play so well, allowing that to throw them off of their game.  But in all honesty, for a team so loaded with talent like Washington is to play "off their game" that poorly is not a plausible explanation for the loss.

What is a reasonable explanation is the fact that South Dakota State University is for real.

Winning at Washington is no fluke, especially when it's on the road, considering the Huskies were riding a 32-game non-conference home winning streak at the time.

Beating proven mid-major teams such as the ones that the Jacks defeated at the CBE Classic sub-region is no mistake. 

College basketball analysts need to start taking notice of the upstart South Dakota State team before they miss the boat completely. 

It's time for people to realize that college basketball is so much more than just the Dukes, the Kentuckys and the Syracuses of the world. 

Look out for South Dakota State coming down the stretch of the season, as they begin the bulk of their conference schedule and look to cement their names in people's minds come tournament time. 

March is just around the corner. 

If the Jackrabbits can continue to grow as a time like they have in December, this could be the first March Madness that features some Rabbits hopping into the tournament scene.

Take notice people, or you'll miss out on a feel-good story your whole family can get behind.