BURNSVILLE 72, EAST RIDGE 49

Due to New Year’s Day the schedule provided a few more

opportunities to see games on a Wednesday than are usually available. I opted to complete my South Suburban collection with Burnsville facing East Ridge. The Blaze lived up to their name early by coming out Blazing hot on their way to a convincing 72-49 victory over the Raptors who are still searching for their first win of the season. After four and a half minutes Burnsville was up 15-3 and had already cashed in three 3s. Two minutes later the Blaze had crossed over to a 20 point lead (27-7). Zhane Thompson added two more 3s in that burst. After that the play evened out. East Ridge, in a rebuilding year after the graduation of the 2017 core of their section 4AAAA runner up team, focused on getting the ball in the paint. The Raptors had 23 post up attempts, three more than the Blaze. Burnsville thrived on the 3 ball with eight for the game and also found their way to the rim for 18 points (compared to 8 ER points).

Burnsville is now 4-7 on the 2017-18 campaign. All that is left on their menu is the South Suburban teams. ER is 0-10.

For those keeping track… I have now charted 49 of the 64 AAAA teams (76.6%). As for the top 100 I have 62 checked off and 38 to go.

 

Team	PP100	scorer	Distributor	D stops
Burnsville	104.3	Zhane Thompson 24	Zhane Thompson 8	Carresha Russell 8
East Ridge	72.1	Kate Burns 12	Ellie Swanson 5	Madalyn Slavin 6

 

TRENCH PLAYER: Zhane Thompson….The sophomore guards’ prorated points would have yielded 38.48 if she would have played the entire contest.