BROOKINGS — For the first time in a long time, the South Dakota State women’s basketball team enters the season as an underdog.
Well, sort of.
The Jackrabbits, who have been to five consecutive NCAA tournaments and won either the regular season or conference tournament title in every non-COVID year since 2017, were picked second in this year’s Summit League preseason poll, as defending regular season champ North Dakota State claimed the top spot.
But that was before 2026 Mid-Major player of the year Brooklyn Meyer was added to the roster as part of the NCAA’s ‘Five-for-Five’ rule, bringing one of the best players in Summit League history back into the fold for another year.
Meyer averaged 22.6 points and 8.0 rebounds per game last year. She’s a big, big addition. Then again, she was on the team last year and the Bison beat them for the regular season title, and NDSU returns most of their team, including Summit League MVP Avery Koenen.
The good news for SDSU, beyond getting one of the best players in the nation back, is that the Jacks expected to have a pretty good team, anyway, without Meyer. They also lost underrated point guard Madison Mathiowetz and steady role player Ellie Colbeck to graduation, so this was going to be something of a new-look squad.
The Jacks, who were 27-7 last year, open the 2026-27 season on Monday night when they host Creighton.
SDSU guard Mahli Abdouch with coach Aaron Johnston during their win over Murray State on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025 at First Bank & Trust Arena.
Dave Bordewyk/SDNMA
“This year’s team is gonna be a perimeter team and rightfully so,” coach Aaron Johnston said before Meyer officially returned. “We have a lot of really good perimeter players. But now we’re really long and athletic on the perimeter. We’re probably as big on the perimeter as we’ve ever been. So definitely a little bit of a change in philosophy, change in style, but honestly kind of going back to where we were maybe ten years ago. You know, our first NCAA team, I don’t think we started in by over six foot tall. So we’ve had these teams before.”
Brooklynn Felchle, a 6-3 sophomore, and Maggie Hartwig, a 6-1 senior who struggled to find a role last year, were in line to replace Meyer. It’ll be interesting to see how they fit in now that she’s back.
Junior guard Katie Vasecka is a high-ceiling player who’s battled injuries her first two years, while junior guard Emilee Fox and sophomores Mahli Abdouch and Hadley Thul showed promise last year.
They’re ready for more responsibility this year.
“It’s going well,” said Abdouch, a former SF O’Gorman standout who averaged 6.0 points per game last year as a redshirt freshman. “I think there’s a lot of growing and developing that I’ve done in the past two years, and that our whole team has done, so we’re prepared for bigger roles. The work we’ve been putting in at practice has paid off.”
SDSU’s Katie Vasecka drives to the basket against Murray State on Nov. 11 2025 at First Bank & Trust Arena.
Dave Bordewyk/SDNMA
No one is suggesting that the presence of Meyer made the rest of the team complacent, but there’s no doubt they leaned heavily on her. Going through all of preseason without her enabled the other players to get more comfortable with a larger role, to learn to be assertive, to prepare themselves to contribute.
That means that now that Meyer is back the team may be more diverse around her.
“I think that we have a really strong and different skill set than we did in the past years and we’re really leaning into that more this year,” Hartwig said. “It’s great to have so many talented players. You can kind of just rely on whoever. If somebody’s having an off night or somebody’s having a really good night, it doesn’t really matter, we’ve got players with specific skill sets that we can tap into.”
SDSU’s Hadley Thul tries to steal the ball from Washington’s Sayvia Sellers during their NCAA tournament game on March 20, 2026 in Fort Worth.
Matt Zimmer/Sioux Falls Live
Audrey Shindelar, a freshman from Stewartville, Minn., is expected to make an impact, while Hillary Behrens is back after starting 12 games and youngsters Abby Hoselton, Claire Sheppard and Jaidyn Dunn will also hope to carve out more minutes.
“Everyone is stepping up together,” said Sheppard, a former Flandreau standout. “It’s a great time to link arms and do it together, on and off the court, leadership roles, basketball roles, you know, all the things that make a great team.”
Matt Zimmer is a Sioux Falls native and longtime sports writer. He graduated from Washington High School where he played football, legion baseball and developed his lifelong love of the Minnesota Twins and Vikings. After graduating from St. Cloud State University, he returned to Sioux Falls, and began a long career in amateur baseball and sports reporting. Email Matt at mzimmer@siouxfallslive.com.