All season long, the Summit League has been one of the tightest conferences to try to handicap right at the top. Now, it’s down to a pair of arch rivals to square off for the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, as the South Dakota State Jackrabbits take on the North Dakota State Bison in college basketball betting action on Tuesday.

The Bison have already had to go through the mill to get here for this game. They beat the third team in the trio of Summit League studs, the Western Illinois Leathernecks just last night in a gritty 55-43 game that proved to be a heck of a lot tighter than the final score suggested. F TrayVonn Wright was the man of the hour, as he scored 19 points in spite of the fact that he is fourth on the team in scoring. The scoring options are clearly there for NDSU, knowing that G Taylor Braun, F Marshall Bjorklund, and G Lawrence Alexander are all double digit scorers on a regular basis. What really makes this team go though, is its pace and its stifling defense. Thanks to the efficiency shooting the basketball, the Bison really limit possessions on the other end of the court. They are only allowing 26.3 rebounds per game, which also cuts down on chances. As a result, opponents are only scoring 55.1 points per game against them, and the two teams here in the Summit League Tournament have only tallied 101 total points in two games as a result.

The Jackrabbits probably have the most creative team nickname you’ll see fighting it out for a spot in the NCAA Tournament this year. This isn’t just a cute team, though. SDSU is legit. G Nate Wolters is one of the best scorers in the entire country. He is averaging 22.5 points and 5.8 assists per game, and he is well on his way to being Summit League Tournament MVP if he can put together another good game in this one. Wolters and the Jackrabbits are shooting 47.0 percent from the field and 39.5 percent from long range as a team this year, and when this offense gets going, it’s tough to stop. F Jordan Dykstra, G Chad White, and F Tony Fiegen are all double digit scorers as well, making it difficult for teams to just key in on Wolters when he has the ball in his hands. G Brayden Carlson has averaged 8.7 points per game too, and he can always put together 12-15 points in a game if left alone, too.

Prediction:

We have already seen more No. 1 seeds in conference tournaments fail to win their league crown (7) than win their conference crown (2). It’s not looking good here for the Jackrabbits to say the least. We have thought that Wolters is the best player in the conference all season long, but the best team in this conference isn’t South Dakota State, yet North Dakota State. We like the Bison’s defense to get the job done in this one to punch their ticket to the dance. North Dakota State 64 – South Dakota State 61

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Adam Markowitz

is a staff writer living in the Orlando area. He has covered NFL, MLB, college football, CFL, AFL, NBA, college basketball, NASCAR, golf, tennis, and the NHL for a number of various outlets in his career, and he has been published by a number of different media outlets, including the Orlando Sentinel and the Wall Street Journal.

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