ST. PAUL, Minn. — (AP) — One of the highest-scoring teams in the country has 22 wins, the No. 2 seed for its conference tournament — and no place to play after that.
For the University of St. Thomas, the accelerated transition to full-fledged NCAA Division I member is almost over. In their final year of postseason ineligibility following the rare jump from Division III, the Tommies must savor their limited taste of March Madness at the Summit League Tournament.
While snipping the nets this week might feel like a bittersweet title celebration, considering the treasured experience and invaluable exposure an NCAA Tournament appearance presents, the makeup and position of Minnesota's second Division I basketball program has given players, staff and supporters plenty of belief it can perennially contend for a spot on one of the biggest stages in sports.
"We’re not really thinking about it right now, but in the future, definitely,” freshman guard Nolan Minnesale said. “There's going to come to a time where we’ve got to take it to the next level, which would be March Madness.”
St. Thomas is one of nine Division I schools still in their probationary period and ineligible for the NCAA Tournament this month. Queens University, which finished sixth in Atlantic Sun Conference play, is the only other men’s team with a winning record. The other seven, entering Wednesday, are a combined 75-141.
Among the 364 Division I teams this season, St. Thomas is the only one in the top 15 in each of these categories: field goal percentage, free throw percentage, 3-point percentage, assist-to-turnover ratio and points per game. The Tommies are 117th in the NCAA NET ranking, the primary sorting tool used by the tournament selection committee, with South Dakota State (119th), North Dakota State (130th) and regular-season champion Omaha (181st) helping put the Summit League solidly this year in mid-major status.
Three years ago, Bellarmine won the Atlantic Sun while in its postseason ban, giving the NCAA Tournament bid to runner-up Jacksonville. This season, the Knights were finally eligible — and finished 5-26.
As difficult as making the NCAA Tournament can be in one-bid leagues, though, the Tommies are hardly worried about peaking too soon in this process. They play Denver in the quarterfinals Thursday in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
“As much as we may dream about it, it’s so easy just to be immersed in the present, because otherwise we're wasting this opportunity of building this legacy. Because I envision, when we make it some day, the excitement that all of our former D-III guys will have,” coach Johnny Tauer said. “Particularly those nine D-III guys on that first team who we wouldn’t be where we are today without. I don’t spend a lot of time dreaming, but I do think that’s always in the back of my mind.”
After ejection in 2019 from its Division III conference of 100 years for what several smaller schools felt was a competitive imbalance, St. Thomas soon targeted the ambitious leap to Division I after options for staying in Division III or moving to Division II were less than ideal. The NCAA granted its request to cut a 12-year timeline to five and, after lobbying by St. Thomas and the Summit League, recently formalized a rule trimming the Division III-to-Division I transition to four years.
Tucked into a tree-lined residential neighborhood, St. Thomas is a 10-minute drive from both downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. While Minnesota is a haven for hockey, the Twin Cities area continually produces Division I basketball talent with NBA players including Chet Holmgren, Tyus Jones and Jalen Suggs to show for it. Just up the Mississippi River, the Gophers have been struggling in the Big Ten with only two NCAA Tournament wins in 28 years.
With a new 5,500-seat arena opening on campus next season, the program carries plenty of potential even in the wild new world of name, image and likeness money. After going 10-20 in 2021-22 with nine holdovers and all five starters from the final Division III team, the Tommies went 19-14 and 20-13 the last two years. They lost only two players to the transfer portal along the way.
They're 22-9 now, inspired by three of their top nine players — seniors Drake Dobbs, Ben Nau and Rich Byhre — who've forgone the chance to make the Big Dance.
“They’re the founding fathers,” sophomore forward Carter Bjerke said. “It speaks volumes of their unselfishness.”
Tauer is a St. Paul native who starred for St. Thomas from 1991-95 and joined the coaching staff in 2000. He became head coach in 2011 a few months after the Tommies won the Division III national championship, a feat they repeated in 2016.
He was once a full-time psychology professor, too, with a background in intrinsic motivation that neatly carries over to the court. He published a book about staying respectable and sane as a parent in the youth sports circuit. He's a numbers guy who can quickly cite an opponent's KenPom rating or recall his team's effective field goal percentage ranking from two seasons ago.
“He trusts us to go out there and make the right decisions, make the right plays,” Bjerke said.
There's no better leader or salesman for this program than Tauer, who has worn some form of purple and gray for more than half his life. Though the NIL budget pales next to a Big Ten team and an undersized roster consistently puts the Tommies at a rebounding disadvantage, they're betting an emphasis on continuity and culture — largely with recruits out of high school — can yield sustained success. Eight players have led them in scoring this season.
“We don’t script that," Tauer said, "but I think it is the natural byproduct of these guys really embracing — in an era of college basketball when you can highlight individualism and lots of other things — that this is something special.”
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