Class A Tournament Takeaways
The High School hoops season ended Saturday night with three new teams claiming a state championship and a fourth earning its third straight title. The Class A State Tournament has been one of the entertainingly unpredictable tournaments traditionally and that…
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Continue ReadingThe High School hoops season ended Saturday night with three new teams claiming a state championship and a fourth earning its third straight title.
The Class A State Tournament has been one of the entertainingly unpredictable tournaments traditionally and that was again the case this year as there were highly competitive games along the way before a blowout win for Henning over North Woods in the state title game.
Here are five takeaways from the tournament:
Henning was as good as its record
It feels like so often, you see teams that have so-so records that haven’t caught the breaks or haven’t quite put it all together yet where people say ‘they are better than their record.’ Then there’s the opposite where teams rack up a ton of wins and the prevailing belief is ‘that team isn’t as good as its record.’
I tended to think the latter was the case with Henning this year. The Hornets crushed the competition in the regular season but on paper, a lot of their wins didn’t move the needle. Through no fault of their own, the teams Henning played throughout the year weren’t particularly successful save for a few teams.
That proved to be a dumb idea. The Hornets won four of their seven postseason games by more than 20 points including a 34-point win over Spring Grove in the semifinals and a 25-point win over North Woods in the state championship game. It’s easy to get caught up in focusing on prospects and through that lens, Henning might not jump off the page. But the Hornets proved they are a ridiculously good basketball team.
North Woods finished as a state runner up for the third year in a row
The Grizzlies made it to the state championship a third year in a row, getting some late-game heroics from senior guard Cade Goggleye in the semifinal win over Ada-Borup. North Woods has been one of the five best teams in Class A each of the last three years, continually blowing out its competition in the regular season and through the section tournament and while the Grizzlies haven’t been able to seal the deal, they’ve been as successful as any Class A program out there.
Goggleye and a few other key seniors will be gone but North Woods isn’t going anywhere either. Trevor Morrison and Darius Goggleye will be back to give the Grizzlies a very good frontcourt pairing and TJ Chiabotti looks like that next star in the program.
There were a lot of blowouts
The Class A State Tournament generally seems to be one the closer-to-the-chest tournaments where a lot of the talent levels are similar. That wasn’t the case this year. Henning won three games by a combined 67 points. Springfield – the No. 1 seed – lost to Spring Grove in the first round and rebounded by beating CHOF by 22 and Westbrook-Walnut-Grove by 30 to win the consolation bracket.
Cromwell-Wright lost twice by double figures. Westbrook-Walnut-Grove lost to North Woods by 17 then came back to beat Cromwell-Wright before losing by 30 to Springfield.
There were certainly some compelling games including all three games that featured Ada-Borup; but there were a lot of lopsided affairs for a state tournament.
This was the last time some really good seniors were on the floor
The aforementioned Goggleye will go down as one of the better players Northern Minnesota has seen in a long time.
Spring Grove will bid adieu to a terrific senior class which featured two three-plus year starters in Alex Folz and Ethan Matzke. The Lions have been one of the best teams in the state and this was viewed as their best chance to get to state, and they finally did.
Isaac Fink put up video-game numbers for pretty much his whole high school career and finished with more than 3,000 points and a couple state tournament appearances. He was one of the elite players in the state regardless of school size and Springfield won a ton of games with him leading the way.
CHOF’s top guy, McCalleb Alleman was a varsity regular for three years and the Lions have been one of the better small-school teams in the metro area during that time. Going out with a state tourney berth is well done.
WWF backed up one of its best seasons in school history with another great season despite graduating four starters from last year’s team. The Chargers weren’t supposed to be all that great but guys like Andrew Quade and Parker Freeburg were awesome all year.
What could’ve been without some of the big upsets in sections?
The Class A State Tournament was uneven this spring and it makes me wonder what could’ve been had there not been a few big upsets in the section tournaments. Heading into the postseason, it could be argued that two of the three best teams in Class A were BOLD and Minneota and neither made it to even the subsection final. As someone who thinks upsets make the NCAA Tournament worse in the long run, I wonder how things might’ve been different if those two teams would’ve been in the field. Sure, BOLD would’ve had to go through Springfield in this hypothetical and the Tigers ultimately won two games in blowout fashion after getting upset in the first round. Could BOLD have fared any different?
Minneota was arguably the best team in Class A all year and while the Chargers came out of that section with a good record, I wonder if the Vikings would’ve made any more noise.
Ultimately that’s part of what makes those section tournaments fun is seeing teams that upset the top teams. Seeing everything always going to chalk can get boring and if those teams were capable of losing in the second round of the section tournament, who’s to say they would’ve had any chance in a pressure-packed setting like the state tournament. It’s a fun hypothetical and one I’m sure those teams are thinking about a lot more than the teams that ultimately beat them.