MINNEAPOLIS — It’s been a long time coming for the Southwest Minnesota State womens basketball team since its last Division II tournament appearance. It’s been 23 years, to be exact. The Mustangs hadn’t played in The Big Dance since 2002, when they fell in the regional championship to South Dakota State. This year, No. 7 SMSU will look to keep its season alive when it takes on No. 2 Concordia-St. Paul in the Central Region quarterfinals.

“We’re just, number one, thankful, and number two, I think we’re appreciative of all the people that helped us get here,” SMSU head coach Tom Webb said when asked how it feels to see his team end the 23-year drought. He acknowledged the administration, faculty, recruits, players, coaches and trainers for all of their roles to get to this point. “All those people that sacrifice for you to grow, and we just kind of grew and grew and grew it. Now we’re at another milestone that we certainly have wanted for a while, and we’re excited about it.”

This season is also just SMSU’s third-ever tournament appearance, with the team’s lone other appearance coming in 2001. The Mustangs’ lone national tournament experience comes from sophomore Natalie Nielsen, who played one minute for South Dakota State in last year’s Division I tournament, and head coach Tom Webb, who reached the Division II tournament in 2015 as the head coach of the Cameron Aggies of the Lone Star Conference.

The Mustangs had been knocking on the door the last few years, reaching the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference tournament semifinals before falling to Minnesota State in 2023 and 2024. Webb credited this year’s group ability to take things one game at a time as a key piece of why it was able to get over the hill.

“A team that can win 17 [games] in a row means that they’re not worried about the 17, they’re just worried about the next one, and that one adds to the next,” Webb said. 

Concordia-St. Paul is also a team that knows a thing or two about win streaks, entering the tournament on a 16-game win streak after just barely edging out SMSU for first place in the NSIC in the regular season. SMSU finished the season at 19-3 in conference (26-4 overall) while Concordia-St. Paul finished at 20-2 (29-2 overall).

SMSU and Concordia met just once during the regular season, with the Golden Bears defeating the Mustangs 72-58.  Leah Dengerud led the Golden Bears with 18 points while Lindsey Becher added another 15; for the Mustangs, Peyton Blandin and Audrey Swanson led the team with 13 points each.

Leading the Mustangs this year is Bri Stoltzman, who was named the Central Region Player of the Year by the Division II College Communicators Association on Thursday. The selection only adds to Stoltzman’s impressive list of accolades, as she was named the NSIC’s Player of the Year and earned seven Player of the Week awards. Alongside her, Audrey Swanson and Peyton Blandin were also selected to the All-Conference first- and second-teams respectively.

The Mustangs and Golden Bears both play at very different tempos despite ranking second and third in the NSIC in points per game, SMSU averaging 82.7 and Concordia a step back at 75.3. Despite the offensive gap, CSP still leads the conference with a plus-16.3 scoring margin on the season, just 0.2 points ahead of SMSU, because of the Golden Bears’ conference-best 59 points per game allowed.

Pace, rebounding and physicality will be three key factors in SMSU’s ability to pull off the upset, Webb said, but added that he still views rebounding at a high level as the main focus for his group heading into the tournament.

“You have to make plays on basketballs, whatever that is. You can’t just make one play, you’ve got to make two, three, four, five plays defensively,” Webb said. “Otherwise, you’ll get beat right away. We might guard the ball screen correctly, but then we have to guard the action after the ball screen correctly… those are the kind of things that will matter.”

For Concordia-St. Paul, Lydia Haack leads the team with 16.6 points per game while Becher leads the team on the glass with 7.6 rebounds. SMSU still remains among the conference’s best rebounding squads, however, with Swanson leading the NSIC with 9.5 total rebounds per game and Natalie Nielsen leading the league with 3.4 offensive boards per game.

Webb said that he felt like staying true to team identity will also be key to determining who can come out on top.

“Just be you and you don’t have to be anything other than that,” Webb said. “We’re talented enough, we certainly have enough depth, we’ve just got to make sure to just be us tonight. In postseason play, the team that can kind of beat them the most and get to their spots, run their sets and just kind of do what they do usually has the most success. We just have to, early in the game, settle in a little bit and just play.”

Tip-off between the Mustangs and Golden Bears is set for 2:30 p.m. in Pittsburg, Kan. The winner will take on either No. 3 Fort Hays State or No. 6 Southern Nazarene in the region semifinals on Saturday. A radio broadcast of the game can be found on 105.1 FM KARL while a stream of the game can be found on the official NCAA website.