WILD CARD TOURNAMENT

The Holiday Tournament season got underway on Thursday. I made my way to Willmar for the WildCard event. Minnehaha, who has been one of the foursome for year,  has been replaced by Redwood Valley. The Wild(cats) and Card(inals) both picked up the openers. In both cases the opponents had the player that ended up being the leading scorer (and both joined the 31 Club). But balance and depth won out.

#6AA NLS beat #14AA Albany thanks to a 17-3 surge over the course of six minutes in the middle of the first half where the Wildcats were even at 10, but led 27-13 after scoring on seven straight possessions. The Huskies managed to get the deficit down to nine (41-32) with 13:45 left. NLS regained control of pace and momentum with a triple by Emma Hanson.

The second game was a battle of Cardinals. It should be noted that Willmar connected on ten 3s. They were much better there than at the free throw line where they were below freezing at 25%. Both teams shot better than 50% inside. Willmar made better use of the turnovers with a 4/5 conversion on transition lay ups.

This will be a contrasting championship game with NLS emphasizing the inside, Willmar the outside.

	NEW LONDON-SPICER	ALBANY
POINTS	64	50
REBOUNDS/OFF	44/16	31/10
TURNOVERS	20	20
2FGA/%	49/38.77	38/36.84
3FGA/%	14/42.85	17/23.52
FTA/%	12/66.67	14/71.42
PP100	90.1	69.4
TOP SCORER	Two with 13	Paige Meyer 19

TRENCH PLAYER: Ava Kraemer of NLS with 10 points, 125 pp100 and a 20 in the 31 Club.

	WILLMAR	REDWOOD VALLEY
POINTS	61	44
REBOUNDS/OFF	33/14	29/4
TURNOVERS	10	18
2FGA/%	26/53.84	21/52.38
3FGA/%	30/33.33	13/38.46
FTA/%	12/25.00	15/46.67
PP100	108.9	78.6
TOP SCORER	Madi Linbo 14	Haley Garman 18

TRENCH PLAYER: Madi Linbo with 14 points, 127.3 pp100 and a 20 in the 31 Club.