Minnesota needs another Division I team

California and New York both have 24 of them. Texas has 21 and North Carolina has 18. Utah has six and Wisconsin has four, as does Iowa. Idaho has three and so does Kansas. Both North and South Dakota have two.

Minnesota joins Wyoming, Maine and Vermont as the only states with one.

If you haven't figured it out yet, this is the number of Men's Division I basketball teams in each state.

For more than a few reasons, Minnesota should have more Division I programs.

Look no further than the results of last weekend's opening rounds of the NCAA tournament and one would see that The Minnesota State High School League produces enough talented players to promote a few schools from the NSIC, which SCSU is in, to the next level.

There were 19 players on teams in the field of 65 from the "land of 10,000 lakes." The "North Star State" was represented from Cal-State Northridge (Xavier Crawford, Richfield) to Cornell (Ryan Wittman, Eden Prairie).

Ten native Minnesotans, including Ben Woodside, Cole Aldrich and Isaiah Dahlman, returned home last week with their teams to play at the Metrodome for opening round action. Woodside and Aldrich had arguably the best individual performance of any in the tournament.

Woodside, from Albert Lea, scored 37 points in nearly leading the North Dakota State Bison to a first-round upset of Aldrich's Kansas Jayhawks. The Bison also had 15 points and 12 rebounds from Morris native Brett Winkelman. Two more Minnesotans, Dejuan Flowers and Josh Vaughn, scored a combined five points for the Bison.

It is a good thing they did not beat the Jayhawks, though. Otherwise Minnesota fans would have missed the second-round performance by Bloomington's Cole Aldrich. Aldrich had a triple-double with 13 points, 20 rebounds and 10 blocked shots.

So the talent is there. Now how can a school like SCSU, UMD or MSU-Mankato keep those players from going out of state?

Surely Dahlman (Braham) who is playing at Michigan State and Aldrich would have been any school in this state league if they looked past the U. And it appears as though no school in the state could offer what Wittman is looking for academically.

But Woodside was only offered two Division I scholarships; you would have to believe he would have looked into any offer he got. Same goes for the other seven Minnesota exiles who suited up for the Bison.

Anyone who has everbeen to Cedar Falls, Iowa would have to think that Travis Brown (Richfield) or Kwadzo Ahelegbe (Oakdale) would have at least considered a Minnesota school before settling on Northern Iowa.

P.J. Hill (Minneapolis) who had 9 points and 8 rebounds for Ohio State in their loss to Siena, had to play two years at a community college before the Buckeyes brought him in.

Local St. Cloud product Jonathan Williams might have stayed in St. Cloud to be "The Guy" instead of playing a minimal role on the Gophers bench. Or Princeton native Jared Berggren might not have left the state all together to play for Bo Ryan at Wisconsin.

There are a number ofMinnesota schools large enough for the move up too.

SCSU's enrollment of about 17,000 students and UMD's student population of 11,190 are larger than a number of participating teams.

Siena won a game with a student population of only 3,000. Cleveland State, with 9,847 students, produced the biggest upset of the tournament by beating Wake Forest. Gonzaga is still playing, while their student body has only 4,515 students.

While NSIC trophies look nice in the cabinet and the Division II Championships Winona State won were fun to watch, it would be interesting to see how a second team of Minnesota high school players could perform at the Division I level.