Reusse: Eli Wolff’s farm lad perseverance pays off for Gustavus men’s basketball

Three important players on coach Justin DeGrood’s Gustavus Adolphus men’s basketball team decided to use the fifth year available to them from COVID-19 limitations for the 2024-25 season. They were Wyatt Olson, Evan Wieker and Adam Biewen.

Three other seniors would be getting big minutes in Brady Kienitz, Spencer Swanson and Dawson Kellen. And Myles Barnette and Jake Schmitt, a pair of sophomores from Wayzata High School, were going to be on the court consistently.

DeGrood decided he owed a conversation to Eli Wolff, a junior guard from a farm near Adams, a hamlet in southeastern Minnesota that’s seven miles from the Iowa border.

“When one of our players is going to be an upperclassman, meaning a junior or senior, I believe a coach owes that student a straight conversation on where he stands with his team,” DeGrood said. “The schoolwork takes a lot of time at this college, and so does basketball.”

Those hours spent on basketball had earned Wolff two varsity minutes as a freshman and nine minutes as a sophomore, when he also missed time because of an injury.

“Our six seniors were back with a vow to try to win an MIAC championship, we had players in the program who were ahead of Eli on the depth chart that I envisioned, and there were some new recruits,” DeGrood said.

“I sat down with Eli and said, ‘Let me start by saying we want you on this team; you’re a great person, a great teammate … but also as a junior, you deserve to know that right now I don’t see you above 15th when it comes to playing time.’

Wolff took a couple of minutes and said to DeGrood: “I want to be on this team. I want to help us get better.”

The Gusties won the MIAC championship (regular season) for the first time since 2011-12 when they defeated St. John’s 66-62 in St. Peter on Feb. 15 last season. Wolff did not play that festive Saturday afternoon, but he had moved up DeGrood’s imagined depth chart during the season and was getting a few minutes.

“I was the recruiter for him out of that little high school, Southland, and what we liked about Eli was that he could really shoot,” DeGrood said. “He still can. Eli can really shoot.”

Wolff played 73 minutes for the 2024-25 Gusties, putting his career total for varsity time played at 84 minutes.

Even in Division III, in these times of high costs and high pressure to succeed, not many athletes averaging a minute per game for three college seasons figure to say to themselves, “Keep going. You still can make this happen.”

“I grew up working on a farm in the summer,” Wolff said. “Lots of rock picking; most of it for my grandfather, Clair Davis. He runs 1,200 acres. And he still works way harder than I ever did.”

Wolff recalled the conversation with DeGrood at the start of the 2024-25 school year and said: “I took it as a challenge. To me, there was always a light at the end of this tunnel.”

The six seniors left. The players and basketball staff voted to name two captains during early practice. One became Carson Koch, a senior forward from East Ridge High, and the eighth man on last season’s title winner.

The other? Eli Wolff, the senior with minimal playing time.

“The vote didn’t surprise me,” DeGrood said. “Eli’s as competitive as can be, but he also has such a light-hearted spirit. He’s just a connector.”

The Gusties improved to 8-0 in the MIAC (and 16-1 overall) with a 92-56 victory over St. Scholastica on Wednesday, Jan. 21, in Duluth. They went 16-for-31 on three-pointers, with Wolff going 4-for-8 as part of a 14-point night. That put him at 40-for-100 on threes in 17 games (all starts).

The Wayzata duo of Mr. Inside (Barnette) and Mr. Outside (Schmitt) are combining for 33 points a game. Lakeville North’s Andrew Quam has emerged as a sophomore, with Koch and especially Wolff chipping in as seniors that had to wait their turn.

“Eli’s worked his tail off for three seasons to get to this point,” Koch said. “We’re very good friends, but we’re different on a basketball court. I’m ground and pound … he’s a shooter. What’s the same with this team is we all play defense.

“I’ve been with him for four years. You wondered if he was ever going to get the opportunity, but Eli just kept grinding.