File photo by Travis Rosenau Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart’s Lily Hubin goes up for a layup during a Section 2A Girls Basketball Tournament game against Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s on March 4, 2024, at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter.

HECTOR — Regardless of what Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart Mustangs junior guard Lily Hubin decided to do after high school, she was always going to be a Mustang at heart.

Nobody will have to worry about learning a new team name for her, however, as she will continue her basketball career in college with the Division II Southwest Minnesota State University Mustangs.

Hubin announced her commitment on Oct. 13. She will join a women’s basketball program that has been a hot spot for some of the area’s top guards in recent years, joining the team with 2023 high school grads Allison Milbrandt (BLHS) and Brynn Busse (Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop) and 2024 high school grad Kadence Hesse (Sleepy Eye).

Hubin said she also had interest from Dakota State University, St. Cloud State University and Minnesota State University Moorhead, but SMSU was her first offer after the BLHS Mustangs’ fifth-place finish in the Class A State Girls Basketball Tournament in March.

“After my St. Cloud offer, I kind of just wanted to sit down and really think about what it might look for me after high school, because I was happy with the offers I had, I wasn’t looking to get more,” Hubin said. “I already knew I really liked SMSU and St. Cloud and Dakota State, so I wasn’t, like, ‘What offer can I get next?’

“So I sat down with my family and we just went through pros and cons of each and they really just said, ‘Whatever feels right to you,’ because that’s only something I can judge. … SMSU, it’s just been great having the coaches reaching out to me and supporting me this whole summer with AAUえーゆー and I really like that college, so that’s how I decided.”

Hubin averaged 19.9 points per game and set the BLHS school record for most points in a season during the 2023-24 campaign with 664 points. She also tied the school’s 3-pointers made record in a season with 101 and averaged 5.9 rebounds and 3.1 steals per game.

Now, she’ll have some weight off her shoulders ahead of her junior year of basketball at BLHS.

“I knew from the start once I visited SMSU, I loved it and it was going to be hard to beat,” Hubin said. “So then I started really thinking and it was a, ‘What am I waiting for?’ kind of a thing. And just a little bit of, ‘I would love to play basketball now and not worry about getting scouted or anything like that.'”

Hubin said a big reason she chose SMSU was due to SMSU head women’s basketball coach Tom Webb and assistant coach Hanna Geistfeld.

“The thing about SMSU I liked the most was obviously the coaches,” Hubin said. “Coach Webb, anyone you talk to only has good things to say about Webb and Hannah, too, she’s an amazing woman. They come to support all my AAUえーゆー games and text me frequently about volleyball and things like that and I really appreciate that part.”

Hubin, who just wrapped up a standout season of volleyball with a BLHS team that went 26-4, isn’t going to wish away the last two years of high school, but she’s looking forward to playing college basketball alongside several players she’s played against — and some she’s played with.

“Taleigha Bigler just committed, too, right around the same time as me, she’s from Marshall, I play with her in AAU, so it’s good to have that connection, too, she’ll be in my class,” Hubin said. “And there’s two girls that were from my conference that committed, they’ll be sophomores I believe, one of them will be a senior when I get there, Kadence Hesse and Brynn Busse. So I know them a little bit from playing against them, super nice people, I’m super excited to play with them.

“And then Allison Milbrandt, who graduated from BLHS that I got to play with, I’m super close with her and, again, she has so many good things to say about SMSU, so that really weighed in on my decision.”