Happy Hour with John Gaskins

Make that two college basketball players from South Dakota headed for the big NIL bucks and bright lights of the Big Ten. 
 
A week after South Dakota State's Damon Wilkison announced he is headed to Nebraska, South Dakota's Isaac Bruns — the Summit League's per-game leading scorer (20.8) this past season — on Thursday announced his commitment to Southern California.
 
Bruns, the 2023 Gatorade Player of the Year for state champion Dakota Valley, will play for former Rapid City Thrillers (CBA) coach Eric Musselman — son of former Golden Gophers and Timberwolves head coach Bill Musselman.
 
This makes three South Dakota college players in the last two seasons that moved on to the Big Ten. Former Jackrabbit center Oscar Cluff — who likely made over $1 million in one season at Purdue — started and averaged 10.6 points and 7.6 rebounds for a Boilermakers squad that finished 30-9 and within one win of the Final Four.
 
With little reaction time before their Thirsty Thursday taping from Orion Pub, Sioux Falls Live sportswriter Trent Singer and the Happy Host gave their instant response to the news and opined about the positives of South Dakota's college basketball teams' best players repeatedly leaving for more NIL money year after year.
 
As in, don't expect another exhausting bitch session about the downfall of mid-major hoops in the NIL era. That's been done. A ton. 
 
The hosts also ponder: Will Wilkinson or Bruns inch toward the kind of impact Cluff had in his one season on the biggest stage?
 
Also, some words about former SDSU quarterback Mark Gronowski and former USD QB Aidan Bouman, both now a week into their mini-camp stints. Hear what the Dolphins general manager said recently about Gronowski and what USA Today's Green Bay Packers website wrote about Bouman.
 
Timberwolves Talk
 
Minnesota got "punked" by the San Antonio Spurs in Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals, a 133-95 steamrolling in San Antonio. That's the word coach Chris Finch used, a word Anthony Edwards found "crazy" to use.
 
Sure, the series is now even at 1-1 and the Wolves still have home court advantage in what is now a best-of-five series, with the next two games in Minneapolis (Friday and Sunday).
 
But did that from-the-tip bludgeoning in Game 2 leave enough of a mark to convince observers the Spurts will keep the steam rolling?
 
Not so fast, my friend.
 
Our own Happy Hour Timberwolves talk panel — the host, USF men's basketball coach, and fellow die-hard Jon Oppold (owner of Orion Pub, a Wolves watch bar) — dissects how the Spurs boomeranged their way back into the series after Minnesota's Game 1 win and dive into how Finch can turn the tide back.
 
Other big-picture NBA Playoffs topics also developed during this discussion, like flopping. It hurts the Wolves in more ways than one and we wonder how (or if) it can be eliminated or curtailed.
 
And while flopping and 3-point jacking have, in some minds, diluted the NBA product in recent years, hear why today's game is still better (in some ways) than the "glory days" of the Bird-Magic-Jordan era.

The South Dakota Sports Lounge is a weekly show, produced by Midwest Sports Plus and hosted by Sioux Falls Live's John Gaskins, that showcases the best and/or most topical sports conversations from the daily sports shows in the Forum Communications family — Happy Hour with John Gaskins (Sioux Falls), Hot Mic with Dom Izzo (Fargo) and The Nate Brown Show (Rapid City). Most episodes also include at least one feature story about an athlete in the region. This week:
 
Happy Hour w/ John Gaskins: Augustana football coach on his program's NSIC title-contending consistency, being a "CEO" head coach, how Vikings' recruiting targets and results have evolved the last few years, how NIL and transfer portal have affected Augie in recent seasons. Plus, an emotional story about the last moments of the life of Jeff Fylling, the 40-year radio voice of the Vikings who died recently after a battle with cancer.
Hot Mic w/ Dom Izzo: SDSU athletics director Justin Sell weighs in on the NCAA Tournament's expansion to 76 teams, NDSU's move to FBS and what it means for SDSU, the finalization of the Jackrabbits' 2026 football schedule and the heavy lifting it took to notch a 12th regular season game, and the fan base's reaction and attitude to the ever-changing NIL landscape.
 
The Nate Brown Show: Sioux Falls Live sports editor Matt Zimmer on how sports coverage has changed on a local/national level, mostly for the worse. Apps and streaming is replacing cable while laptops and phones replaced newspapers for print consumption. That's not all good, Zimmer says.
 
Where Are They Now: A new series debuting on Midwest Sports Plus that tracks down standout high school athletes who have moved in life to college athletics or other ventures. This episode's guest is Indiana University swimmer Grace Hoeper, a former standout at Solon High School in Iowa.

We start with the 38-point pummeling and where series is headed then move to flopping — how it hurts the NBA and all of basketball. But is the game overall better today than those glory years of the 80's and 90's so many pine? Enjoy a bigger picture Wolves & NBA chat.

On a Thirsty Thursday in Orion Pub, John Gaskins & Trent Singer react to South Dakota native Isaac Bruns choosing Southern California as his NIL landing spot for his final year of eligibility after a few prolific years at USD. Plus, what did a Miami Dolphins executive say about SDSU legend Mark Gronowski after signing the former Jackrabbit and Iowa Hawkeye to an undrafted free agent contract.

Everything matters in constructing a college football juggernaut.
 
Recruiting, talent, coaching, culture. It all matters and it all adds up. And, oh, yeah... money matters, in case you haven't noticed. The higher the level, the more NIL matters.
 
But how much does scheduling — who you play, when you play, and where you play them in a season — matter? SDSU coach Dan Jackson gave the Happy Hour host a thoughtful response to that question, plus these queries: What constitutes an ideal schedule for success at the FCS level, and how he feels the 2026 slate suits his squad?
 
The Happy Hour host goes through both the Jackrabbits and Coyotes schedules. Whose is more favorable to yield the best record and higher potential for a Missouri Valley championship and high playoff seed?
 
As far as those other things go — recruiting, talent, coaching, culture — Augustana's Jerry Olszweski has inarguably mastered that mix in his first 12 seasons. The Vikings are building on seven consecutive winning seasons, won back-to-back NSIC titles in 2023 and '24, and won their first nine games before finishing 9-2 last season.
 
How have they done it? What is in place in '26 to keep the Vikings rolling? It starts at the top and "Coach OJ" walks us through it. 
 
This includes a glimpse into the new faces on the coaching staff and elevations of two long-tenured defensive assistants to co-defensive coordinator roles to replace Mark Sipple, who took the DC job at FCS Drake. Then, there's the quarterback battle between two talented and now proven gunslingers in Gunnar Hensley and Rich Lucergo, Jr.
 
But a bulk of the discussion lies in the things Olszewski does to keep and raise the bar — decisions like having two co-coordinators instead of one, why he acts as a true "CEO" style head coach instead of calling plays and leading the offense or defense, his approach to recruiting (how much more time is spent on transfer targets than a few years ago?), and how Augie deals with whatever twists come in Div. II with NIL and transfer temptations from Div. I schools for his best performers.
 
Plus, get inside the headset. How does an 18-year head coach make the biggest decisions — punt or go for it, kick a field goal or go for it, go for the tie or for the win — during the heat of a pressure-packed game?
 
As always, OJ leaves the listener feeling better about life and football when the conversation is over, whether that listener is an Augie fan or not.