Fresh off winning the Great West Tournament the Fighting Sioux traveled straight to Colorado Springs to play Air Force in the Collegeinsider.com postseason tournament. Needless to say I was surprised, as I'm assuming many Fighting Sioux fans were, to see the Sioux win the Great West Tournament. Albeit not for lack of confidence in the team but more a lack of evidence in the teams ability to close out close games. Not many people attended the Sioux's home game vs. Utah Valley and even fewer stayed to the end of the game as the team's lack of experience definitely showed as it seemed on more than one occasion that the Sioux had the game under wraps only to have it slip away one way or another (missed free throws and a classic Chris Webber moment). This, to me anyway, made the win over South Dakota in the Great West Final even more impressive as it seemed the game had slipped away from the team at the end of regulation, the first overtime and especially after Aaron Anderson's questionable offensive foul with 15 seconds left in the second overtime, much like the Utah Valley game. However, the Sioux did not give up, unlike like many of my friends did, and they managed to pull out a program defining win that no doubt will stand the test of time. With that win the Sioux earned the only automatic bid into the CIT tournament and a game against Air Force , a team from the Mountain West who played two games against SDSU and BYU (seeded as a 2 and 3 respectively in the NCAA Tournament). With little time to prepare for a team from a quality conference we as fans should expect little more than a confidence building experience for a young team heading into the offseason. With all this said expect Air Force to play alot of zone defense (2-3 and 1-3-1) and with that zone defense we should see Great West Tournament MVP Patrick Mitchell get plenty of shots up much like the most recent game against Chicago State. And while a victory may be a stretch for the Sioux they are playing their best and most confident basketball of the season amd we should expect nothing less than a hardfought game that will do wonders for the team going into the offseason! We have much to look forward to in the future as Sioux fans, a future that I am looking forward too. GO SIOUX!