8 MN STATE AAU CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES

With back to back weeks of high intensity & pressure performances, the best anyone can hope for is to “survive” the state tournament experience. That is what happened on Mother’s Day with the conclusion of the second week of the Minnesota State AAU tournament. Two times there was a new first place finisher from the previous week. Three times there was a new match up. Five times there was a repeat head to head contest. One of those flipped. The only thing that was consistent from the week before was a plummeting of the pp100s and numbers across the board generally. The 31 Club only saw four entries, and only one of those played in last week’s games (more on that feature later).

I suppose one could claim that defense reigned supreme Sunday. With the clear understanding of who can do what and how a team lost (or one) the previous Sunday, more attention was paid to scorers, especially 3 point shooters. Space was at a premium and last week’s scorers did not have the room to operate. Their every movement was scrutinized. Some tallied an absolute zero on Mother’s Day. That is a testament to better defensive spacing, or indicates that players need to develop a counter, or team’s need to work on freeing up their scorers. This will be job one for several, if not all, teams in the upcoming weeks. The next major event will be the Summer Jam. By then it won’t be a state only (if that is true now) event, but more regional with a smattering of national teams arriving in the past. The hope is that the numbers will pop back closer to the century mark then.

Only one team improved their offensive performance (slightly) from the week before: Inspired Athletics 13 National in the 7^th grade division upped their pp100 to 92.2, that is 0.8 better than the week before. The rest of the crew barely made it to the 80s. Obviously the younger age / grade divisions don’t have the game experience or consistency to bring home those lofty numbers and the 14 minute crew (except for Inspired Athletics) only registered a second best 73.7. The older 16 minute divisions had three 80s in the four games. But they also had an abysmal 46.7, the second lowest total of any division.

This marked the lowest scoring totals with only three teams able to score 50 points or more in the title games. The last time such anemic numbers ruled was in 2017 when only two teams could crack that level. Now it is time for me to wax nostalgic—-back in the day (and the day was 1997) my team under the PowerPlay label, won what would now be considered the ninth grade level 77-67. In 2023 that title game had a combined point total of 75. That is a huge difference. And no, defense was not invented in 2004. Were the teams better skilled back then? They were more, or showed, more creativity. We did not “survive” state, we thrived. We had fun….and one of our featured players was out with a knee injury too. Maybe we had better depth. I know we had more possessions. But even if the possession count was 20 more than the 56 in the ninth grade title game this year that puts us over 100 pp100. My guess is that it was closer to the 66-65 range (or 118 pp100).

Looking at the tradition and history, the bigger clubs were featured more frequently in the title games. North Tartan led the way with three titles, including the top two age brackets with four appearances; Next up was Inspired Athletics, with some connections to NT, with two titles in their only two appearances, both in the 14 minute division. IA is based in Fargo-Moorhead. Metro Stars, MN Stars and MN Fury all had one gold medal in their Sunday showcase. The MN Stars were in the second most title games with three. The MN Suns, absent a week before from the final two seeds, crashed the party on Sunday. The other two non-first /second seed teams from the week before was Inspired Athletics in the 4^th grade division, and OU Elite (Only Us) in the 7^th. Some of OU Elite was under the MN Stars umbrella a year ago.

Building consecutive titles—North Tartan 17 EYBL won for the third straight year. Their sister team NT 16 EYBL has won twice in a row. MN Stars 2026 3SSB picked up their fifth title, but second straight. They missed out in their seventh grade year. Prior to their MN Stars affiliation, they were known as Taylor Hill Elite. The eighth grade both had two new challengers. The previous four time winner at that age division, 43 Hoops, had players depart. Inspired Athletics at seventh grade flipped from second last year. NT at the sixth grade level has claimed three straight matching NT 17 EYBL. Metro Stars 2030 Starks flipped a second place finish from a year ago.

Looking at the other numbers—we already established Inspired Athletics as the best for scoring, and pp100; the “best” game, if you look at the losing team’s pp100 was the eighth grade title game with MN Fury flipping their second place finish with MN Stars Antl (75.4). That was the game where last week’s scorcher from 3 Analaya Salanoa was not permitted to inhale without someone an arm’s length away. The “best” game measured by margin was obviously the ninth grade finish with MN Stars holding on to edge out NT 38-37. The pp100 differential was even closer at 66.7 to 66.1. In that late NT rally it was Kate Amelotte who delivered two 3s in the last 12 seconds to keep the fans on the edge of their seats. MN Stars did not help their cause by going 2/3 on front ends of one & ones in the last 1:06 only generating one point out of a potential six. There were one other one possession game and that was in sixth grade. There NT was in a dog fight back and forth. It was tied at 26 with eight minutes left. Chloe Reddy nailed a 3 for some separation for NT. With slightly over five minutes left Rosie Kalschuer put Metro Stars up by one with a 3 (32-31). Immediately Beckett Greenway answered with her own 3. She ended up scoring nine of NT’s final 11 points. Both teams down the stretch delivered. Combined they both scored on seven straight possessions, the best of the day.  One hot / cold half game was at the tenth grade division. Both MN Stars and NT 16 were knotted up at 18. The second half was an extremely different story with NT finding their mojo, and holding MN Stars to 10 on the way to running time.

THE GAMES

4: Inspired Athletics 10 National 34, MN Fury 2031 Blue 30

5: Metro Stars 2030 Starks 36, MN Fury 2030 Blue 20

6: North Tartan 6 Nike 42, Metro Stars 2029 Garcia 39

7: Inspired Athletics 13 National 59, OU Elite 45

8: MN Fury 2027 Blue 49, MN Stars 2027 Antl 43

9: MN Stars 2026 3SSB 38, North Tartan 15 EYBL 37

10: North Tartan 16 EYBL 50, MN Stars 2025 3SSB 28

11: North Tartan 17 EYBL 54, MN Suns 2024 S40 42

THE PLAYERS

This will be a relatively short subject since I touch on the 31 Clubbers. Last week there were six plus several with pp100s close or better than 200. This Sunday saw only four make the elite level. And zero crossed over to the 41 Club. Leading all players, and the only player to make it back after a week, was Beckett Greenway of NT 6. Last week she was on the nose at 31. This week was even higher with 37. Her pp100s did dip to 87.5 from 107.7, but down the stretch as I noted before she was gold. In the last five minutes her pp100 would have been 150 (nine points, six possessions). She also has bragging rights in the house with sister Maddyn of NT 17 ending up with a 22 in the 31 Club and an exact same 87.5 pp100.

One behind Beckett with a 36 was Tatum Gordon in the fourth grade division with Inspired Athletics. Gordon had an exacto double double with 17 points and 17 d stops. Again Beckett & Gordon are piling up gaudy numbers in a shortened game. Two others joined the 31 Club, but both players finished second. And both were not involved in the previous week’s action. First up was Ava Smith of OU Elite with a 32. She had 19 points and a 95 pp100 in the loss to Inspired Athletics. The final addition was Tori Oehrlein (Crosby-Ironton) of MN Suns in the 2024 division. Oehrlein had a 33 with a 106.2 pp100 scoring 17 points in the loss to NT 17. Both 2026 2000 point high school scorers were playing up (the other being Maddyn Greenway.

One player did not get into the club but should get attention (and will defensively going forward)—Amishia Ramlall (Rosemount) of MN Fury in the eighth grade division helped flip the previous week’s second showing to championship with 23 points on 6/10 3s. She just missed out with a 28 score in the 31 Club. Her pp100 was an eye popping 176.9. On three consecutive Fury possessions she hit back to back 3s followed by a conventional & one to take Fury up 29-20.

FINALLY

this article was NOT written by AI, but by kja—-a real human with real insights and real context.