With Eric Peterson out, South Dakota men's basketball assistants navigate difficult situation

The updates, so far, have been "positive." South Dakota men's basketball assistant coach Pat Eberhart said he hasn't spoken to Eric Peterson directly since the first-year head coach was injured in a fall at his home, but the Coyotes get daily updates from Peterson's wife, Lindsey.

"We just share that with the team and then go from there," Eberhart said.

Eberhart, whom the Coyotes (5-6) named the acting head coach for its game against UC-Irvine and will likely remain in the post until Peterson can return, said everything thereafter "just happened." It was always going to be a collaborative effort, as it was with Peterson, too. Eberhart said they just needed to "divvy out different responsibilities to different people." As the Coyotes navigate a difficult situation entering the Summit League schedule, Eberhart expects there to be little change to the gameday feel, just one less person to prepare with.

"Petey hired everybody on this staff for for a certain reason, and he has high expectations for all of us," Eberhart said. "We're gonna try to just do what what he would expect us to do."

The Coyotes, with a four-person staff, assigned two coaches to offense and two coaches to defense earlier in the season. Peterson and assistant coach Casey Kasperbauer would alternate games scouting an opponents offense, and Eberhart and fellow-assistant Brandon Ubel would do the same rotation for the defensive scout. So the only change, for Eberhart, is that against Coastal Carolina (and presumably every other opponent thereafter) he was both managing the game and the Chanticleers were his scouting responsibility.

But in Eberhart's first game as the acting head coach, Ubel handled the defensive scout, so he was free to focus his full attention on the game management, substitutions, timeouts and all other things that are required of a head coach on gameday. Eberhart said there were discussed before and during the game about "how we wanted to sub," too. It wasn't "as difficult as people might think," Eberhart said.

It's, of course, not entirely the same. Just as it would be felt in any change from one coach to another, the "delivery might be different," but Eberhart said he urged players that the message is still the same. The Coyotes want to play "hard," "together" and "for each other." Eberhart said it's, in part, the culture that Peterson created that allowed them to push through in its first game. The Coyotes will just have to keep doing that.

"The goal is still the same," Eberhart said. "We're just trying to do the best that we can and make coach Peterson as proud as we possibly can."

Follow Sioux Falls Argus Leader reporter Michael McCleary on Twitter @mikejmccleary.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: With Eric Peterson out, USD MBB coaches navigate difficult situation