Last Tuesday South Dakota State beat Omaha 79-77 in the Summit League title game to earn an automatic bid to next week’s NCAA tournament. The Jackrabbits made the NCAA tourney in 2016 before losing to Maryland and made it back this year to claim the school’s 4th NCAA tourney bid since 2012. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to speak with SR PG Michael Orris about what it feels like to make the tourney during his 1 year of eligibility as a graduate transfer.
You originally signed with Illinois but followed Illini coach Bruce Weber to Kansas State before later transferring to Northern Illinois: why did you switch to the Huskies, and do you have any regrets about the whole process? Hindsight is 20-20 so I guess I would have handled the recruiting process a little differently, but at the time I was just a 17-year old kid. That being said, I have no regrets.
You then decided to come to South Dakota State as a graduate transfer: how does your approach coming into a season change when you know that you only have 1 season of eligibility? It is a really unique situation: I wanted to find the perfect coach/system/fit that would maximize my abilities and allow me to excel. I was longing for that great PG/coach relationship like I have seen in the past with TJ McConnell/Sean Miller or Ryan Arcidiacono/Jay Wright. The moment I talked to Coach TJ on the phone we just clicked right away.
You play for 1st-year coach TJ Otzelberger: how do you like playing for him, and did you 2 create a special bond because you were both starting your Jackrabbit careers at the same time? I think that is where our bond started. He always had a chip on his shoulder with people telling him he could not do this or that. He wanted this to be a redemption year for me because he had heard about me from back when I was in high school and knew the kind of person that I was. It is unbelievable to play for him: the freedom he gives his players is 2nd to none and we finish each other’s sentences when it comes to play-calling.
In your final non-conference game of the year you scored 15 PTS/6-8 FG in a 22-PT loss at Wichita State: how do they compare to teams you saw during your time in the Big 12? I think that they are right there: they have the length/size/versatility to rival any high-major that I have seen, but we can rival them as well.
SO PF Mike Daum was conference ROY in 2016 and conference POY in 2017: what makes him such a great player? Mike is special: it is unique to have a big man who is so mobile. We call him “Baby Dirk”, which could not be more accurate. His awareness offensively is incredible, which makes my job as a PG a lot easier.
In the Summit League semifinal you scored a career-high-tying 20 PTS including the game-winning shot with 1.5 seconds left in a 3-PT win over #1-seed South Dakota: did you think that it was going in, and where does that rank among the highlights of your career? I knew as soon as it left my hand that it was going in…which is why I did a little pose! It was a crazy game and to finish it like that is what I dreamed of as a kid on my cement driveway counting down for the last-second shot. It has to rank as the #1 shot that I have ever taken.
Last Tuesday you scored 6 PTS while playing the entire 40 minutes in a 2-PT win over Omaha: how exhausted were you by the end of the game, and what was the feeling like during the court-storm? Coach TJ laughed after the Denver game and asked if I enjoyed my night off…since I only played 36 minutes! I love playing/competing and do not care about anything else. My career could have ended at any moment last week so fatigue was not going to set in for me. I would have played 60 minutes if it could get us into the NCAA tourney.
In the 2016 NCAA tourney the Jackrabbits had a 5-PT loss to Maryland: did you watch the game, and what do you think it will take to pull off an upset this year? They fought very hard and all the guys have talked about that experience. As you see every year you can just throw records out the window: at Kansas State we were a high seed but lost in the 1st round. You have to do all the little things: we are all trying to win and it is a beautiful thing to watch.
What kind of seed do you think that you deserve, and what kind of seed do you think that you are going to get? We have been talking about that all week. I have heard that we are going to be a 15 or 16 seed but it does not matter to me: we are fortunate to be in the tourney and will be excited with whatever we get. I think it would be cool to be a #16-seed and try to make some history against a #1-seed.
Your career on the college court might come to a close next week: what is your plan for the future? I want to play for as long as I can so I will pursue a pro career for as long as I can, but I am going to get my Masters degree and might end up on the sideline 1 day as a coach.
The Hoops HD Committee Report: Saturday, March 11
Click HERE for Jon Teitel’s interview with South Dakota State player Michael Orris
Click HERE for Jon Teitel’s latest Bracket Projection
Click HERE for Warren Nolan’s RPI and Statistical Analysis
Click HERE for Andy Bottoms’ Award-Winning Bracketology
Click HERE for Galen Clavio at CrimsonCast and click HERE for SportsPolitik
Click HERE for Scott Schwartz and The Buffet/Waiting Line
Saturday marked the 3rd night of the Hoops HD Selection Committee meetings – tonight we filled the final at-large spots. Once the final at-large spots were filled, the remainder of the field was seeded into the Master Seed List and the committee did a thorough scrubbing of the seed list to account for all games played through Saturday.
Two spots initially opened up based on Kentucky, SMU and Cincinnati winning their games and opening up at-large spots out of the SEC and American conferences. After debating the final teams listed Under Consideration, there was also an A-10 contingency to account for because of VCU and Rhode Island’s matchup in the A-10 title game tomorrow. Our committee was in a position to choose 3 teams out of a pool of 8 teams to consider. What made things real interesting here was Middle Tennessee was voted into the field as an at-large – the initial 3 teams voted into the field were Kansas State, USC and Middle Tennessee. This also meant that we now had a contingency team from Conference USA to consider! Rhode Island became the final at-large contingency team regardless of whether or not they are able to beat VCU in the A-10 Championship tomorrow. Later on in the evening, Middle Tennessee did beat Marshall to lock up the automatic bid out of Conference USA. At the end of the day, this means that VCU, Kansas State and Rhode Island are the last three teams to be voted into the field.
The next phase was to finish filling the master seed list with all the at-large teams along with teams playing in their conference championship games (i.e. Bakersfield, New Mexico State, New Orleans, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Troy, Texas State, Princeton, Yale, UC-Irvine and UC-Davis). Bakersfield, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and UC-Irvine were ultimately removed from the seed list after losing in their conference championship games. At the end of the night, we had 70 teams in our Master Seed List. That number will shrink to 68 teams once the Ivy and Sun Belt championship games are played.
The 3rd and most laborious task of the night was to scrub the entire seed list. This is the process where teams were shifted up and down to account for games played through Saturday. Motions to move teams require a simple majority yes-or-no vote to be approved. Below is the updated selection board:
Tomorrow will be the final day of the Hoops HD Selection Committee meetings. Look for our final bracket projection on the website sometime after the Atlantic 10, Ivy League, SEC and Sun Belt conference championship games go final. It is not expected that multiple contingency brackets will be needed this year, but stay tuned to find out!
Below is the above seed list placed into a bracketed format. As the article indicates above, this is not our final bracket