AAU Minnesota Championships
North Tartan Nike Elite vs Minnesota Fury Elite
5-21-11
Bloomington Jefferson H.S.
Made it over to Bloomington Jefferson High School in the mid-afternoon to get myself situated for one of the two big games coming up on this day – this one being the Minnesota Fury Elite which advanced earlier in the day by beating Minnesota Comets Gold and perennial powerhouse North Tartan Nike Elite with its star-laden roster. While the match-ups clearly favored North Tartan, I was anxious to see how the Fury Elite team would respond in this match-up.
North Tartan’s Whitney Tinjum’s lay-up at the 15:45 mark got things going in this contest and, despite Orono’s Amie Tunheim answering with a short jumper for the Fury a bit later, things started so much in favor of North Tartan that this one threatened to be a blowout early on. And it was North Tartan’s Mikayla Bailey who really lit things up in the first half. Bailey knocked down her first “3” from the right corner at the 14:50 mark that gave the crowd on Court #7 a preview of what they would be in store for in the first half. Even more disconcerting for Fury head coach Andy Cerisier was that the Fury was having a ton of trouble trying to penetrate inside and having every pass contested on their first few possessions as the North Tartan team brought the heat on defense early on. Shauna Horsch did score for the Fury at the 11:01 mark to cut Tartan’s lead to 7-4 but that was quickly countered by Bailey’s back-to-back “3’s” that bulged the North Tartan lead to 15-4 by the 8:15 mark.
Natalie Larson from Cambridge-Isanti connected with a “3” of her own to help her Fury team inch a bit closer at the 7:51 mark but, once again, North Tartan stepped on the gas. After North Tartan’s Weisz knocked down one shot from the charity stripe at the 6:28 mark, Eden Prairie’s Shayne Mullaney added to the North Tartan lead as she sank a short jumper one possession later that gave North Tartan a two “touchdown” cushion at 21-7. Strangely enough, where this should have been the point for North Tartan to pull away and build a 20+ point lead, this instead is where things started to unravel a bit for North Tartan as they suddenly decided it was best to put it in auto-pilot mode. Slowly, the Fury began to inch their way back into things despite a multitude of turnovers that plagued them early on. Now, it was North Tartan’s turn to turn the rock over on a number of occasions. And it wasn’t because the Fury was necessarily causing the turnovers; rather, it was the complacency that was slowing the North Tartan surge. In any event, after Tunheim’s free throw at the 4:58 mark that finally brushed off the cobwebs on the Fury side of the scoreboard, Emily Behrman made her presence felt as she drained a “3” from the top of the key at the 4:14 mark to cut the North Tartan lead to 21-11. North Tartan would maintain this margin coming down the stretch and made one final push to up the lead to fifteen when Bailey swished yet another “3” with just under a minute left that gave North Tartan a seemingly “safe” 28-13 lead.
North Tartan’s Tinjum started the second half as she did the first; scoring inside that upped the lead to 30-13. Then, Tessa Cichy, in what otherwise was a quiet day for her, drew some “ooh’s and ah’s” from the crowd as she scored off-balance and was fouled in the process. The subsequent charity stripe shot gave North Tartan a 33-13 lead at only the 15:31 mark and it seemed like this one would turn into yet another yawner for North Tartan. Except somebody forgot to tell the Minnesota Fury team though as they suddenly hunkered down and began to execute their half-court offense much more crisply. Even more curious was that the North Tartan group suddenly seemed to lose focus and intensity – again. After Weisz scored inside for the Fury at the 13:39 mark, Megan Van Hulzen found an opening in the Tartan defense and connected on a lay-up at the 13:10 mark. Then Weisz connected with a lay-up with her own and was fouled in the process. Her free-throw whittled a 20-point deficit down to 13 and this flurry of offense by the Fury had got the North Tartan’s team attention.
The North Tartan team responded by turning up the oven on defense as they forced two five-second calls on the Fury. Then, Marissa Janning who was quiet in the first half for North Tartan decided it was her time to take control of the team on offense. She connected on a lay-up at the 11:00 mark and then knocked down another shot and was fouled in the process. Her free throw again put North Tartan in the driver’s seat with a 38-20 lead by the 10:19 mark. And, just as before, the Fury was ready to respond. Waconia’s lanky Lauren Deadrick was fouled while trying to score inside and was able to knock down the two obligatory charity stripe shots. After Tunheim scored inside at the 8:03 mark to whittle the North Tartan lead to 38-24, Weisz connected with a short jumper less than a minute later that enabled the Fury to get things down to a much more manageable twelve-point deficit. This, perhaps, was the critical point for the Fury team if they were ever going to get the deficit into the single-digit range. But both Tunheim and Weisz missed pairs of free throws within a minute and North Tartan’s Janning made the Fury pay for it. She connected with a huge lay-up at the 4:43 mark and Joanna Hedstrom followed suit with a score of her own that upped the North Tartan lead to 44-29 by the 3:56 mark that was, for all intents and purposes, the game. Both Horsch and Deadrick missed pairs of free throws for the Fury team that was already on the respirator coming down the stretch. Dahlman and #23 made some late scores for North Tartan and, in the end, had that 20-point cushion; winning 50-30 although it was done in somewhat unorthodox fashion. This could easily have been a situation where the Fury could have had North Tartan in a nail-biter coming down the stretch had they not fallen into a hole early on and made their free throws when they had to have them.
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