South Dakota State’s first game of the 2018-19 season had something more to it than just the usual excitement bolted onto opening night. It was a premier mid-major match up in Frost Arena in mid-November, as the Jackrabbits hosted Grand Canyon, the then-relative Division I newcomer whose ambition had hoisted it to three consecutive 20-win seasons coming into that year.
SDSU held off the Lopes that night behind 31 points from David Jenkins, and extended, at the time, the nation’s longest home winning streak to 21 games. Notable as that all was, four years later it turns out there may have been record breakers taking the floor for the first time as well. Matt Dentlinger and Alex Arians made their respective debuts in that game and, as both return for a final year in Brookings, headline a number of Summit players poised to plant their names in their respective program record books this coming season.
Arians did not start that game against GCU, committing a pair of fouls and turning the ball over twice in five minutes. That, however, would be the last time he would play single digit numbers in a career that’s spanned four years, and counting.
The Madison, Wis. native has been relied on heavily by both T.J. Otzelberger and Eric Henderson and, with good health, will almost certainly set the program record for career games. He enters his fifth year having appeared in 123 games and is within a half season of taking the overall lead (139), a record that is held in part by a player he missed by just one season, Reed Tellinghuisen.
Fellow fifth-year senior Matt Dentinger (122 games) is just one game behind, and both SDSU mainstays will likely find themselves either entering or climbing other top 10 lists in the Jackrabbits’ record book. Dentlinger is already 6th in career blocks with 89, and could conceivably reach third – currently held by Jason Schuetz with 115 – or second (Steve Lingenfelter’s 130 blocks) with an especially prolific year. For his part, Arians enters the year with 261 career assists, and will almost certainly crack the top 10 (Troy Bouman is 10th at 291).
Oral Roberts is also primed to see program records broken this year.
Max Abmas, unsurprisingly, already has his name planted on the Golden Eagles’ top-10 career scoring list at ninth with 1,818 points. Replicating last year’s scoring output would bring Abmas in the vicinity of Caleb Green’s impressive 2,503 points, which remarkably sits at just third in ORU history. The Golden Eagles have a pair of 3,000-point scorers in Greg Sutton (3,070) and Richard Fuqua (3,004), both of whom racked up those point totals in the NAIA.
Abmas also has a chance at cracking the top 10 in assists, where he’s 116 assists shy of the edge of that list and has averaged 108 assists over the past two seasons. All of these individual numbers, however, could be impacted by how Abmas’ game evolves alongside an ascendent Isaac McBride and plenty of other talent either returning or transferring in.
Similarly, the key roles DeShang Weaver (92 games) and Carlos Jurgens (89 games) have played in Tulsa over their respective careers, along with Abmas (89 games), should see them all land in the program’s top 10 in career games with healthy seasons. Weaver also has a shot at becoming a 1,000-point scorer, entering the year with 740 points.
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