Tommie senior forward Jo Langbehn and Coyote junior Cassidy Carson open at Schoenecker Arena on Feb. 22, 2025. St. Thomas won 66-57. (The Crest/Evan Neubauer) 
Tommie seniors celebrate Senior Night on Feb. 22, 2025 before their game against South Dakota. From left to right: Sammy Opichka, Phoebe Frentzel, Jo Langbehn, Jordyn Lamker, Jade Hill, Gabby Johnson. (The Crest/Evan Neubauer) 
Jo Langbehn holds back South Dakota while junior Amber Scalia looks for an opening. (The Crest/Evan Neubauer)
Senior guard Jade Hill led a fourth quarter comeback to give the Tommies a 66-57 win over the University of South Dakota, and the No. 4 seed in the Summit League tournament.
Hill scored 11 of her 22 points in the fourth quarter and outscored the Coyotes by herself in the final ten minutes. She played all 40 minutes of Saturday’s game at Schoenecker Arena.
“I was aggressive and I think that starts with my teammates and my coaches telling me to get downhill, because that’s what they were saying all game,” Hill said.
The win solidified St. Thomas’ spot in fourth place in the conference. This means that the team’s first game of the Summit League tournament will be noon Friday, March 7 against the fifth seed.
Other teams could still shift in the standings with a week of regular season play left, but as they currently stand, the Tommies would play Kansas City in the first round.
Senior center Jo Langbehn scored 18 points while junior guard Amber Scalia notched 12 and grabbed 13 rebounds, while being +19.
“I felt like my girl, they were kind of leaking out back and I knew I could crash the boards, and they kind of just came to me,” Scalia said.
Coach Ruth Sinn said that Scalia’s rebounding led to the team being able to push the fast break better.
“I thought when we were running in transition, we got a lot of good looks and it was like almost every single time when I came down, we got open looks,” Scalia said.
Hill, Scalia and Sinn all agreed that the game was extremely physical and tends to be against South Dakota. Langbehn faced a lot of physical contact while she was playing down low.
“She gets frustrated but the thing is like we talked to her on the bench: ‘let it fuel you, to make you angry and upset and what is the solution?’ And I thought she did a better job with that,” Sinn said.
Coyote senior guard Grace Larkins is leading the conference in scoring and dropped 21 on Saturday, below her average of 23.9 and much less than the 34 she scored on the Tommies when they met in Vermillion.
First-year forward Gabby Wilke scored 14 points, but the rest of the team only combined for 22.
“They understood, ‘who are the people that can support Larkins?’ Larkins is a great player, to give her all the credit, but who can support?” Sinn said, “If you watched in the second half, we really transferred Jade over to her and Jade really kept her from going downhill, and I thought that was the difference in the game.”
The Coyotes’ three-point shooting torched the Tommies to start the game. South Dakota went 6-9 from beyond the arc while the Tommies missed all five of their attempts. In the final three quarters, the Coyotes went 3-20 from distance.
“They are a three-shooting team, and they are streaky, and you saw that in the first quarter. It was 3, 6, 9, they couldn’t miss a shot. Love that our girls didn’t panic. They continued to defend. They continued to try to shore up our crams and making sure the shots didn’t come. I was really proud of their resiliency,” Sinn said.
Hill’s defender fell while the team was pushing it in transition, allowing her to hit junior guard Faith Feuerbach trailing for an open three. That shot tied the game in the final seconds of the third quarter 50 apiece.
From here, St. Thomas outscored South Dakota 16-7 and sealed the win.
The victory was a perfect way for the team to honor senior day. Sinn started a lineup of five seniors and got the sixth, guard Gabby Johnson, in the game in the final minutes.
The player’s families were part of a ceremony honoring them before the game. Hill’s family was its own fan section, complete with purple No. 4 T-shirts and the loudest cheers in the building during her late-game scoring explosion.
“We don’t ever really want to be in a quiet gym. Coach talks about that all the time.We want lots of energy, because that fuels us and gets us going,” Hill said.
This year’s seniors were Sinn’s first Division I recruiting class. Sinn said that they hold a particular place in the history of the program for her.
“This was not a path that was ever traveled before and they chose to travel this path, knowing that there’s going to be bumps and there was going to be twists … but also knowing that they are going to be the first with a lot of things, and they have continued to raise the program and invest in each other and come together,” Sinn said.
The Tommies host Oral Roberts Wednesday, Feb. 28 at Schoenecker Arena. The game tips off at 7 p.m.
Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.
