The Week Ahead: Maple Grove vs Champlin Leads off a HUGE Week
This is a massive week of high school hoops in Minnesota. There are big match-ups everywhere starting with tonight’s #1 vs #2 game of Champlin Park vs Maple Grove. CP vs MG Tonight. We’ve been talking about this game in…
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Continue ReadingThis is a massive week of high school hoops in Minnesota. There are big match-ups everywhere starting with tonight’s #1 vs #2 game of Champlin Park vs Maple Grove.
CP vs MG Tonight. We’ve been talking about this game in “The Race for Mr. Basketball” for about a month now as Brad Davison and McKinley Wright are the leaders and the winner of this game could give us a true leader. Add in Theo John and Tywhon Pickford fighting for that fifth spot and you could have three guys on the final five in this game.
More importantly this is #1 vs #2 right now. The rankings won’t be updated until tomorrow but this is 1 vs 2 after Wayzata lost to Edina. The game is at Maple Grove. If the coaches play man to man the state of Minnesota will likely get their Brad vs McKinley battle (they went at each other in last season’s games often). You will also see Brian Smith vs Jack Hutchison, Josiah Strong vs Bubba Horton, Theo John vs a different battler every couple minutes (Ryan Bredensteiner, Jack Hanson, Noah Champion, 6-8 Max McNellis), and then Marcus Hill vs Tywhon Pickford which could be incredible.
Also Tonight. The list of big games doesn’t end there. Tonight Lakeville North plays Eden Prairie, Osseo takes on Armstrong, Blaine is against Park Center, and Browerville faces Parkers Prairie (14-2).
Apple Valley vs Lakeville North Tuesday. The Panthers have a couple strikes against them coming into this game. One is the Eagles beat them 71-63 a month ago and strike two is that North has to play a good Eden Prairie team tonight and then has to play Apple Valley 24 hours later.
In the previous game Nathan Reuvers was okay with 25 points and 10 rebounds but many of his points came late and he shot 5 of 22 o he needs to play better. Tyler Wahl was solid with 14 points and 12 rebounds. The biggest problem was that Tre Jones had 18 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists dominating guard play and moved the ball to Mohamed Kone, Mason Morse, and Nathan Macho for them to get double digits. The Panthers quite simply didn’t get enough from their guards and they will need to tomorrow if they want to win (plus a better game from Reuvers).
Also Tuesday. Wayzata vs East Ridge is notable, Minneapolis North takes on Minneapolis Henry, NRHEG is at WEM, Pine Island is at Lake City, and Red Rock Central is at Mountain Lake Area.
Friday Night Top Ten. A massive night of games all around the state. Picking just one contest to see will be tough so watch that twitter to keep updated on all these games. We will dive deeper here in Friday Night Predictions four days from now.
- Mahtomedi at Tartan
- New Prague at Orono
- Wayzata at Eden Prairie
- Cleveland at Spring Grove
- Annandale at Watertown-Mayer
- Edina at Hopkins
- Rochester JM at Owatonna
- Norwood-Young America at Jordan
- Cooper at Jefferson
- Lourdes at Byron
Saturday Events. There are events all over the state. The Breakdown’s Winter Lakes Classic (Maranatha vs Browerville, Perham vs Eden Valley-Watkins, etc) is in Alexandria. The Fargo Civic Center has several games, Northland CTC has three, UM-Morris is hosting a day of games, and the North vs South Classic continues.
Marshall at Orono, Saturday. A battle between top five Class AAA teams allows those at Orono to show that they are better than Marshall, but the record is worse because of the better schedule. Marshall, who has a solid schedule but not quite that of Orono, will be given the chance to prove that their number two ranking is legit.
The Weston Baker Magrath vs Jarvis Thomas battle will be one of a kind. Both are in that 6-foot-7 range (just above, just below), both are strong, and both are top five leapers in the state of Minnesota. As long as the officials don’t mess with the game you will see a load of rim rocking plays.
Also, Zach Bloemker vs Colton Codute is a nice battle in the backcourt, Trey Lance vs Max Bjorklund is excellent potentially, Mitchel Sueker against Jack Anderson puts big shooters at the four spot, Reece Winkelman against Griffin Sage is good, and Thomas Lecy vs Jacob Hess will be important as well.