St. Thomas basketball surviving unprecedented jump from Division III to Division I, Summit League
St. Thomas is doing what’s never been done before.
The Tommies, a longtime powerhouse athletic program in the Division III MIAC, are in their first year transitioning to Division I, as members of the Summit League. No college has ever made that leap.
Normally, the NCAA would require any school wishing to make such a move to first make a stop in Division II, but the Tommies were granted an exception, as they were essentially kicked out of their conference for dominating the MIAC competition. The Summit League was happy to add the Tommies as their 10th member (St. Thomas football joined the FCS’s non-scholarship Pioneer League), and they began D-I competition this year.
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The move is, to say the least, a significant undertaking. Division III sports do not offer athletic scholarships. Most of their current athletes were recruited to play at the Division III level.
But with vast financial resources (an endowment of over $540 million; by comparison, South Dakota State’s is $213 million), a major metropolitan location and an enrollment of nearly 10,000 students despite being a private institution, few expect the Tommies’ move to be a failure.
SDSU and USD get their first look at the Summit League rookies this week. The Tommies men host the Jacks on Thursday and the Coyotes on Saturday, while their women’s team visits Brookings on Thursday and Vermillion on Saturday.
So far, both Tommie teams are holding their own. The women are 3-3 in league play and 6-10 overall, while the men are 8-8 overall and 2-2 in conference games.
“I think all of us went into the season with a fair amount of question marks, because this hasn’t been done before,” said Tommies men’s coach Johnny Tauer. “But amidst the uncertainty we just looked at it as, let’s make this year one journey a memorable one, and I’ve been really proud of the way our guys have competed and performed against good competition.”
St. Thomas has history of success in D-III
That St. Thomas is holding their own isn’t exactly a surprise. The men won the D-III national championship in 2011 and 2016 and were regulars in the national tournament, while their women went to multiple Final Fours and Sweet 16s.
The Tommie men were ranked No. 2 in the nation in their last year in Division III but only ended up playing seven games due to COVID-19. They jumped into the Summit League with a veteran roster that gave them a fighting chance. Riley Miller (17.4 points per game), Anders Nelson (17.0) and Parker Bjorklund (14.0 points, 7.4 rebounds) have been productive players as part of an eight-man rotation employed by Tauer, a former St. Thomas player who’s been on the staff for 22 years, the last 11 as head coach.
“The timing (for the move) was terrific because they have a lot of older guys — they’re not gonna be afraid of anything and they’re looking forward to every challenge,” said SDSU coach Eric Henderson. “Coach Tauer has been there a long time so they play with great freedom and pace and really understand their system. He gets his kids to play hard. They do a terrific job of understanding who they are.”
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The Tommies are not postseason eligible as they begin their transition, and even when they become eligible, Tauer admits it will be an adjustment going from a regular contender for national championships in Division III to aiming more towards conference championships at the D-I level.
For the seniors, that has meant sacrificing their present for the program’s future. They know they’re laying the foundation for what is just the second Division I basketball program in Minnesota and embracing the chance to prove themselves against a higher level of competition than they ever thought they’d see when they chose to attend St. Thomas.
“There have always been debates here about how the best players in Division III would compare,” Tauer said. “There have been some examples of players moving up, but to see an entire team do it — I mean, we have the exact same starting five playing D-III one year and D-I the next. That’ll probably never happen again. To see them compete as well as they have speaks to the talent with some of the top teams in Division III, but more than anything I think it reflects the beauty of basketball — if you play tough, unselfish, team basketball you have a chance to be successful.
“The thing I love that our guys are doing is embracing the legacy they’re leaving,” Tauer added. “We want to build a program that 10-20 years from now is so successful that we can look back and go how did that happen — and a lot of that is on the shoulders of these guys and what they’re doing right now.”
The Dakota schools all recruit Minnesota heavily, so moving another Division I team into the conference does pose a threat. But the Summit League desperately needs new teams that can sustain successful basketball programs, and St. Thomas could do that. Their women’s team, also coached by an alum, Ruth Sinn, will hopefully provide an eventual jolt to a league dominated by USD and SDSU.
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“Watching them play you can see that they’ve won a lot,” SDSU coach Aaron Johnston said of the St. Thomas women’s team. “They’re trending up right now. It’s a new D-I school and each time someone new jumps in the pond you worry that there aren’t enough players to go around, but in reality there are. St. Thomas will have a unique niche being in the Twins Cities and being a private school.”
That’s what Tauer hopes. For many years, Minnesota prep stars that didn’t get scholarship offers from the Gophers had to leave the state to play Division I or choose Division II (Nate Wolters, Madison Guebert and Cody Schilling come to mind). That won’t be the case anymore.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re so excited,” Tauer said. “St. Thomas has a rich and unique trajectory — it’s a dramatically different place than it was 50 years ago. To be only the second Division I in the state and to be different in so many ways from the University of Minnesota, I think we’ll have a niche in the state and region that’s really promising. We hope a lot of those kids that have crossed the border to find their opportunity will be excited to stay in Minnesota and play for us.”
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: St. Thomas surviving unprecedented jump from Division III to D-I
