South Dakota State's Brooklyn Meyer's sophomore leap fueled by increased confidence and work ethic
During South Dakota State’s 74-53 win over Kansas City on Thursday, Feb. 15, Brooklyn Meyer’s sophomore season evolution was on full display.
She scored the Jackrabbits' first nine points and looked unstoppable doing it. In South Dakota State’s season finale, Meyer was key in knocking off North Dakota State, the Summit League’s No. 2 team. She tied a career-high 29 points against the Bison, a point total she also scored earlier this year against South Carolina State.
Meyer has enjoyed a breakout season during the 2023-24 campaign and played a large part in the Jackrabbits' successful season, in which they've won 18 consecutive games. Both her counting stats and efficiency have taken a major leap. Her points per game jumped nearly 12 points while her field goal percentage rose eight points, she’s increased her rebounding numbers by 4.4 rebounds per game, and more than doubled her blocks and steals.
“Now you can just see she’s more confident in how to score and where teams are going to try and stop her,” South Dakota State women’s basketball coach Aaron Johnston said after Meyer’s performance against Kansas City. “There's some really good posts that can do their thing, but you can really run offense through Brooklyn because of her ability to score and pass and she's just a super, super talented player and you watch her play right now, you can see she's playing with a lot of confidence and a lot of feel and understanding for what we're doing.”
Meyer knew, that after South Dakota State graduated some key seniors last year, she would have a larger role this season. The Jackrabbits' three season-ending injuries also opened the door for even more minutes for Meyer and others.
To prepare for her sophomore season, Meyer worked with assistant coach Sadie Thramer on her jumper, her post moves and on reading and reacting to the defense. That work she put in during the offseason paid off.
Meyer finished the regular season second in the Summit League in scoring, averaging 17.2 points per game, second in rebounding with eight rebounds per game, and first in blocks/steals per game. Her 53 blocks are the most by any sophomore in program history and the fourth most by any SDSU player in a single season. On Thursday, Meyer won Summit League Player of the Year honors.
Meyer has become a mismatch nightmare for bigs in the Summit League. She’s too fast for centers that have the size to match up with her physically and too strong for the bigs that are as quick as her.
Developing that confidence that Johnston referenced has been a huge turning point for the Jackrabbits' sophomore big. She’s become more comfortable in Johnston’s system; she knows where she’ll get the ball and knows where she’ll have opportunities to score and get her teammates open.
“Knowing that all my coaches and my teammates believe in me, I feel like that just adds to it,” Meyer said. “Knowing that, even if I have a rough game, or even if I'm down, there's always somebody that's going to help pick me up and step up in a game. I feel like that's what makes our team so special.”
A lot has to go right for a sophomore to have this kind of season. They have to have the opportunity – Meyer’s rise in on-court production has coincided with a minutes jump from 12.5 to 27.8 – and they have to have the talent, which has always been there for Meyer. She was offered by SDSU in eighth grade and has displayed the work ethic to consistently improve year after year.
“I started crying," Meyer said of receiving the scholarship offer in eighth grade. "I didn't know, at that point in my life, like I don't think I expected an opportunity quite as big as that ... So that was super cool, and I feel like that just really shows the trust and the potential that they saw in me.”
West Lyon Community School roots
West Lyon Community School girls basketball coach Ryan Brasser first saw Meyer play at a school youth camp in fifth or sixth grade and saw the potential right away.
Years later, when Meyer joined his program as a freshman, Brasser and his coaching staff wanted to ensure she earned her starting spot, even if she'd already received a scholarship offer from a Division I school. They hadn’t started many freshmen in the past, so they wanted to make sure she showed she deserved it.
“We got about, I don't know, seven or eight minutes into the first practice of the year, and we said, yeah, she earned that,” Brasser said. “It did not take very long from her first freshman practice to where we were like, ‘Oh, okay. Yeah, she's pretty good.’”
Throughout Meyer’s West Lyon career, she would frequently ask Brasser if he could come in before school to supervise her workouts. While supervising, he got to see Meyer come up with all kinds of creative drills, including having a racquetball in one hand, throwing it off a nearby wall while working on dribbling.
“She was incredibly creative, designing small little drills to work on all those intricacies of the game that she knew she needed to improve on,” Brasser said.
As Meyer improved throughout high school, teams in Iowa started throwing different looks at her to slow her down. Brasser recalled playing cross county rival Central Lyon near the end of the season, knowing they would try to take her out of the game.
The coaching staff told Meyer the way she could help the team win would be to pass the ball out of the post once they doubled.
“She was so excited to be able to go into the game, not being our go-to scorer, not being our go-to defender, but I could just see a sincere desire for her and excitement to go into the game, knowing that she's going to be that distributor,” Brasser said. “There's not a lot of players that would rather have an assist than a basket, but I just remember pregame she was almost giddy knowing what the game plan was. Knowing that she was going to be used to draw the attention and then kick to her teammates. We ended up winning that game big, because of her making good decisions with the basketball.”
In the West Lyon community, everyone watches South Dakota State games. They're actively talked about in coffee shops and at school, but they don't call them SDSU games, they call them “Brooklyn’s games.”
“That's super special,” Meyer said of having the support of her community. “I feel like that's what really makes the West Lyon community special. It just makes me happy, even now, when a lot of West Lyon people come up or people from schools that I used to play against come and support the Jacks.”
Brasser always believed this could happen. That his star pupil could anchor a Division I team and have the success Meyer has had at South Dakota State. She was the best player Brasser had ever coached and the best player in West Lyon Community School history. Her continued improvement is a testament to her work ethic.
“(Meyer) will never arrive. She will never be content,” Brasser said. “She could go out and have career numbers one night, and the next day, she's going to be talking to Coach (Johnston) and say, ‘Hey, what can I do better? What do you want me to do? What do I need to work on?’ And that's why she continues to improve every single year.”
Meyer’s Jackrabbits play in the Summit League quarterfinals on Saturday, March 9 at 3 p.m.
Jonathan Fernandez covers high school and college sports for the Argus Leader. Contact him at jfernandez1@argusleader.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JFERN31
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: SDSU's Brooklyn Meyer's sophomore leap fueled by increased confidence
