Memorable history has piled up quickly at the classically designed Sanford Pentagon, where on Nov. 10 this cornerstone of the Sanford Sports Complex will be site to its 100th NCAA Division I college basketball game.
It was Nov. 8, 2013, when the Wisconsin men’s basketball team, ranked No. 20 at the time, played St. John’s (New York) in the first Division I basketball game at what was then a new sports facility in the northwest corner of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
The community was getting its first taste of Division I major-college basketball while these two well-known major-college programs – and many elite Division I programs since then – were getting their first look at a venue delivering a nostalgic vibe. It might have been difficult to explain initially, but easy to appreciate.
The 100th game will feature Iowa State vs. Mississippi State on the Heritage Court, the 3,250-seat centerpiece of a facility that includes nine courts and has earned a reputation as a versatile hoops mecca for the region.
Where else can you see nationally televised games featuring future professional players the same week you might watch eight-year-olds learning to dribble a basketball?
“It brings a big-time feel to all ages,” said South Dakota State women’s basketball coach Aaron Johnston, who also knows the venue as a parent of young basketball players. In addition, his SDSU roster has six South Dakotans, many of whom played at the Pentagon on youth teams growing up.
“You could be a senior in college and be impressed and impacted by it,” he said. “Or you could be a fifth-grade girls’ basketball player who’s playing in a tournament there and it feels like a destination spot. That’s what I notice as a parent and what I notice as a coach. I think people playing there would say the same thing.”
National prominence
Farther from Sioux Falls, the Pentagon has earned a national reputation from basketball programs that have nationwide options for non-conference road games. Endorsements from these coaches are easy to find. Perhaps most telling are the decisions from coaches who visit once, then come back.
“It’s cool the way all the people, every time we go there, really make us feel like we’re family,” said South Carolina women’s coach Dawn Staley a year ago. “They probably do that for every team but it’s the mark of a great atmosphere when people are able to make everyone feel like it’s their home court.”
Staley has three national championships at South Carolina and has coached four games at the Pentagon. In words and action, she has confirmed the Pentagon keeps hitting its targets. It’s a track record that speaks for itself.
“There are event operators who don’t deliver on the promises they make to teams and to their coaches,” said Jesse Smith, Sanford Sports’ vice president of operations. “What we have going for us is that we deliver time and time again with a consistent approach to ensuring a good experience for the student-athletes and the fans. We have been good about giving attention to the finer details that makes their experience unique.”
Photo by Jay Pickthorn, Sanford Health
A safe place during the pandemic
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pentagon served as a bubble for college basketball programs to continue playing games. Though the circumstances were unfortunate, the Pentagon played a vital role in keeping the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons moving.
For events like the Crossover Classic and the Summit League tournament, the Pentagon’s design allowed teams to limit their exposure to the virus while also monitoring it via daily Covid testing.
Played in November of 2021, the Crossover Classic involved several of the teams that were originally scheduled to play in the “Battle 4 Atlantis,” in Nassau, Bahamas. The pandemic squashed that, but the Pentagon was available for a safe tournament.
“The Pentagon had the space and the alliance with Sanford Health,” Smith said. “We checked all the boxes. The model we developed was the model used for the Final Four that year.”
The model was in place when No. 1 Gonzaga and No. 3 Iowa played each other at the Pentagon in a nationally televised game on Dec. 19, 2020.
Gonzaga, which lost in the national title game that season, beat Iowa 99-88 with Jalen Suggs, then a freshman playing in his fourth college game, scored 27 points. Iowa’s Luka Garza scored 30.
At the time NCAA guidelines did not permit spectators, though players’ family members had access. It created an odd scene, but a necessary one for college basketball during the pandemic.
“That game stands out,” said Shon Morris, a Big 10 Network basketball analyst who has made several visits to the Pentagon. “There weren’t a whole lot of people there because of the extenuating circumstances, but the game was played at such a high level.”
Morris, a former standout at Northwestern (Illinois), who now counts himself as a South Dakota resident, has definitely warmed up to the place since his first visit in 2015.
“It’s not just the way the Pentagon is built, it’s also the little things you notice when you’re there” he said. “I’ve been to a lot of games at other neutral sites and the lengths Sanford goes to here are distinctive. Each team feels like the home team. That might not come across if you’re watching the game on your TV, but it definitely comes across if you’re a participating team.”
Conversations within the ranks have played a significant role in achieving and maintaining the Pentagon’s status among elite programs. When Staley at South Carolina or Bo Ryan at Wisconsin or Fran McCaffrey at Iowa brings their teams back for another neutral site game, the word gets out.
“It could be as simple as getting a phone call from a counterpart,” Morris said. “It could be ‘Hey, we heard from the Pentagon in Sioux Falls and I know you guys played there. What are your thoughts on the place?’ A lot of times that’s how things get done.”
A little like Hoosiers
The 100th game for the Pentagon will be the sixth at courtside for T.J. Otzelberger, the men’s basketball coach at Iowa State. Otzelberger’s introduction to the Pentagon came as an assistant coach at Iowa State in 2015 when the No. 7 Cyclones beat Colorado 68-62. He was involved in four more as head coach at South Dakota State and this will be his first time leading the Cyclones.
“There are a lot of great players and teams that have come through and played in that building. For us, it’s going to be a game that is talked about nationally that night in college basketball because it’s going to be one of the cool matchups in the country that night,” Otzelberger said. “We’re particularly fortunate because geographically, we have a lot of fans who live in the western part of Iowa or in the eastern part of South Dakota. It will give them an opportunity to see us closer to their homes.”
Amy Williams will be bringing the Nebraska Cornhusker women to the Pentagon on Sunday, Nov. 16, to play North Dakota State. Based on recent history, this is good news for the Cornhuskers, who connected on a school-record 20 3-pointers on their last visit, defeating South Dakota 113-70.
“As I explained it to them, it’s a little like the movie ‘Hoosiers’ in the way the gyms were designed,” Williams said. “It’s pretty darn cool. All I really need to tell the new players, though, is that we hit 20 3-pointers the last time we played here. That should be enough.”
Willliams grew up in Spearfish, South Dakota, played at Nebraska and coached at South Dakota from 2012-16 before moving on to her alma mater. The Nebraska-USD game at the Pentagon was the first time she’d faced the Coyotes after moving on.
“We have a lot of Husker fans up in that area that that get to see our team play,” she said. “It’s just a great situation. And then the way we’re treated – the people who organize the game and the event and take care of our team are second to none. It was a no-brainer for me to bring our team in for a game.”
The major colleges in the region have made regular visits with Minnesota, Iowa, Iowa State and Nebraska combining to make 14 appearances at the Pentagon, with Iowa State, Nebraska and Minnesota also playing games there this season.
“I think the actual game experience is amazing because it’s got such an old-school feel and you pack people in there,” Otzelberger said. “It’s so loud that you feel like you’re in a tournament environment playing meaningful games.”
Photo by Sanford Health
Nationally ranked Iowa fan
The Iowa Hawkeyes men’s program has played at the Pentagon four times. On three of those occasions a real estate lawyer named Greg Suckow was in the audience. Suckow, an Iowan by birth who resided in the Twin Cities for good chunk of his adult life and now lives in California, is better known as “Hawkeye Elvis,” an Iowa superfan who made his presence felt at the Pentagon.
“Every time I’ve been there, the Pentagon has been fantastic,” said Suckow, who retired the Hawkeye Elvis character after his mother passed away in 2024. “It’s amazing because the way they designed the place, it’s a throwback to the old gyms of the ’50s with the parquet floor, the manual clock and the floor decorations. It’s from back in the day when the arenas on college campuses didn’t look like professional arenas. You get 3,000 people in there and it’s louder than hell.”
As noisy as it gets, it’s still not loud enough to drown out a complaint directed toward a referee from a guy dressed in an Elvis suit in the first row.
Suckow knows this first-hand after a short conversation with Kelly Pfeifer, a South Dakota native and nationally regarded Division I basketball official who was working the game that day at the Pentagon. As Suckow described it, the whistles had not gone in the Hawkeyes’ favor in the first half of this Iowa vs. Utah State matchup on Dec. 18, 2021.
The crowd – fans were back to attending games in person during the 2021-22 season – wasn’t having it. Iowa coach Fran McCaffery, who would have a well-documented stare down with Pfeifer a few years later, wasn’t having it either.
From his first-row seat, standing a few feet from Pfeifer a few minutes into the second half, Hawkeye Elvis joined in.
“Even if I’m not in character, I’m not a guy who swears at officials,” Suckow said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to have a little fun. So, during a TV timeout, I said to Kelly, ‘Really? That’s what you saw? You saw the kid from Utah State had his feet set? Really?’ And Kelly turned to me and all he said was, ‘Do you want to stay, or do you want to go?’ I paused and I said, ‘I want to stay.’ And then I sat down.”
Unlike the original, Hawkeye Elvis would not be leaving the building.
“The Pentagon is a place where people get a chance to see players like they never have before in a lot of cases,” Suckow said. “The interaction between the players, coaches and the crowd are not forced. They’re not manufactured. It’s just a by-product of the proximity of everything. It adds a personalness to it that I don’t think you get with a lot of other basketball experiences.”
Legacy secured
That Nov. 13, 2013, Wisconsin vs. St. John’s game marked the beginning of what is now a well-established presence in the Sioux Falls community and the world of college basketball.
Those working to establish a legacy didn’t have a map to guide them, but they did have a philosophy.
“I compare it to our patient pledge,” said Smith, likening it to a quality promise Sanford Health makes in health care situations. “It’s about treating people with compassion and treating them the right way. We carry that same commitment forward to all our venues just like we would at the hospital.”
It’s clear that kind of thinking has added up.
“I don’t think any of us could have imagined that we would get to this point,” Smith said. “I remember how hard we had to lean on our existing relationships to make the first one happen and I never would have thought we would have continued down that road year after year of trying to replicate the first one, but we’ve kept delivering well-run, well-attended events and people have recognized that.”
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Posted In Basketball, Community, Company News, Sanford Sports, Sioux Falls, Sports Medicine
