Local graduate continues to Daum-inate

Mike Daum continues to excel for South Dakota State University. This past week he was named to the All Summit League Team, was selected to the All New Comers Team, was named Freshman of the Year for the Summit League Conference, and was named Summit League Sixth Man of the Year!

He accomplished all of this in his first year of Division one basketball as a red-shirt freshman.

The Summit League Conference Tournament is underway right now and Daum was the key player for the Jackrabbits in two wins in tournament play. In a 73-70 win over Oral Roberts he led his team with 26 points, a career high for him, going 8/12 from the field and ½ on treys and 9/10 from the foul line, plus a fame high eight rebounds and one assist.

In this game he also ran his season point total to 469 points which eclipsed the SDSU freshman scoring record and he is still adding to it. In front of a packed house of 10,306 fans the Jacks ran their season record to 24-7 and advanced to play another game. It was Daum who made the key plays to give the Jacks the win.

In a Monday night game with DU out of Denver Daum again made the key plays late to bring his club from behind to secure a win that looked bleak earlier with the Jacks coming out on top 54-53 with Mike hitting the winning free throw. In this win Daum led his team with 15 points going 4/8 from the field and 7/8 at the line. Again he also was high in rebounds with eight and had one assist. DU missed a free throw attempt with two seconds left that could have made a difference.

I know a lot of his Kimball and area fans were watching these games thanks to technology of the internet. SDSU was to play again this past Tuesday night on ESPN2 but the woe of a weekly newspaper with early print deadlines prevented me from including this information. I'll give it to you next week.