GBB Out & About: New Prague v Northfield; plus the Week that Was & Seeding the State #3

NEW PRAGUE 63, NORTHFIELD 32

The winter storm from Friday impacted events on Saturday too. Some games were postponed, probably prematurely. Travel was ok, if not ideal. Certainly, travel was better than Friday. But the same issues that plagued most of the games I charted this week cropped up again. This time it was the hosts that fell victim to the low end offensive production. In a game that was supposed to be a matinee, but was moved back to accommodate improved road conditions, a pair of former conference and section rivals met. Once upon a time these two teams lived in the Missota Conference and section 1AAAA. Now the host Raiders have returned to the Big 9, while the Trojans have bounced from the Wright County to the Metro West. New Prague is no longer in section 1AAAA and has shifted to 2AAA. They had the better of it Saturday night in the battle between these MN Highway 19 rivals. The Trojans scored a dozen points before Northfield converted two free throws at the 12:14 mark of the first half. The first Raider basket would not occur unit 7:16 remained in the half. By that time the visitors held a 23-3 lead. By that point Northfield had utilized two time outs to no avail. A third would come at 5:34. That did give the home team some life with a 13-7 finish to the half. Still they trailed at the break 36-18.

New Prague found plenty of easy shots in the porous Northfield zone defense. NP shot 50% from 2s, held a +11 margin on rebounds, and forced 25 turnovers, many against the NP full court pressure defense. Northfield only connected at a 21% clip from 2s; the starters were only 15%. The Raiders did hold a big advantage at the free throw line with double the attempts of NP (22-11), but only made four more than the guests. Northfield only managed to get to 45.1 pp100 for the night, the fifth lowest of the season, and the third lowest of the week. NP finished at 88.7.

PP100S

Here is a quick look at how the pp100s for the various classes stand

CLASS PP100 #GAMES
OVERALL 79.4 64
AAAA 81.2 27
AAA 78.8 21
AA 73.8 12
A 84.5 3

The higher number of games, the more accurate the assessment. A is the highest right now, but two of the entries are #1 Mountain Iron-Buhl, and #4 Mayer Lutheran. If we just used the top three in each division AA blows up to 101.8, AAA 104.7, and AAAA an impressive 119.2.

My contention is that this stat measures offensive skill—technique, decision making. Better teams have better players. The mantra I use is “there is no such thing as good defense, just bad offense.” In other words, a team that “holds” another team to 32.8 pp100 as Eagan did to Hastings on Monday is not really an indication of the Wildcats defense, but of Hastings offensive problems, especially without Lily Nuytten. If defense was the gold standard, then I would expect any opponent that faces Eagan to struggle to get to 40 pp100. That won’t be the case going forward. The quality of the opponent matters too. Hopkins, the perennial #1 team in AAAA, had a 106.1 vs Chaska. Other Lake teams Minnetonka and Eden Prairie reached the century mark against quality teams Maple Grove and Lakeville North respectively.

PLAYERS OF THE WEEK

With six games over the course of six days the number of players to choose from fell dramatically. Keeping with the stringent standards of the days of old when I first started this service back in 2005: pp100 must be 100 or better, floor % must be better than .500, only five players qualified. That meant one 31 Clubber was left looking on the outside along with two 100 pp100 types.

One game this week had all the fireworks you could want. Three of the players from the Chanhassen v Buffalo contest on Thursday make the list. Three games could not produce a player that could survive that rigor.

Madi Hicks of Chanhassen tops the list this week with a week’s high in 31 Club (36), pp100 (209.1) and floor % (.727). Hicks was helped with 7/9 long distance bombing. Adding to the Storm surge was Nebraska-bound Callin Hake. The future Cornhusker missed out on the 31 Club by one. The third member of that game wore purple and white—-Brooke Gunderson of Buffalo. She had the second best pp100 of the week with 131.6. Joining the trio were Hanna Wedeking of New Prague and Kiera O’Rourke of Holy Angels.

SEEDING THE STATE

Last year, the asterisk year, there were four teams that were undefeated at the AAAA state tournament. We will never see that again, unless we live under another pandemic restricted year. Right now five teams are undefeated in AAAA, three in section 2, two in section 6, one in section 7. As you can see the math means only three unbeaten teams could remain. However, factor that five of those undefeated teams live in the “Great” Lake and the real result is a possible two survivors. The non-Lake flawless team so far is Blaine.  AAA only has five unblemished. There are quite a few more teams in the smaller classes with 21 in AA, 20 in A. Those numbers should be sliced quickly this week.

AAAA

  1. Hopkins (6)
  2. Minnetonka (2)
  3. Stillwater (4)
  4. Michael-Albertville (8)
  5. Rosemount (3)
  6. Blaine (7)
  7. Maple Grove (5)
  8. Lakeville North (1)

AAA

  1. Becker (5)
  2. Austin (1)
  3. Holy Angels (6)
  4. Paul Como Park (3)
  5. Totino-Grace (4)
  6. Grand Rapids (7)
  7. Peter (2)
  8. Alexandria (8)

AA

  1. Minnehaha (4)
  2. Providence (2)
  3. Goodhue (1)
  4. Fergus Falls (8)
  5. New London-Spicer (5)
  6. Proctor (7)
  7. Glencoe-Silver Lake (2)
  8. Sauk Centre (6)

A

  1. Mountain Iron-Buhl (7)
  2. Minneota (3)
  3. Cass Lake-Bena (8)
  4. Mayer Lutheran (2)
  5. Hancock (6)
  6. Hayfield (1)
  7. BBE (5)
  8. West Lutheran (4)

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