2019 Minnesota Girl's State Tournament - Class AA Wednesday Night Game Recaps 3-13-19

The first game on this Wednesday night looked to be academic - at least on paper anyway - as top-seeded Roseau took on unseeded and unheralded Redwood Valley; a game in which the Cardinals supposedly had no chance.  Trouble was, someone forgot to tell that to this Redwood Valley group and they came out flinging in the first half; shocking the Rams with three-point bombs and timely defensive stops and held a 39-31 lead at the half on this heavily-favored Roseau team despite the fact that the Rams seemed on the verge late in the first half of getting this one knotted up.  By the 14:55 mark of the second half, Roseau had finally closed the gap to a single possession down 42-39; albeit the hard way.  By the 13:50 mark, the Rams had finally poked their nose out in front again at 43-42 .  Redwood Valley, however, showed considerable resistance and things were knotted at 51-all by the 10:40 mark and the Cardinals would again poke their nose out in front 53-51 a short time later.  But when things were still uncertain; when everything hung in the balance, the Borowicz sister duo of senior Kacie and sophomore Katie simply refused to let their Roseau lose on this night and they took over this game on both ends of the floor.  The Rams built their lead to 63-54 with 6:38 left in the second half.  Redwood Valley would still make one last bid and had the deficit whittled down to six points at 69-63 with 4:20 left; still plenty of time and would get it down to four with just under 2:30 left at 69-65.  With just under a minute left, the Cardinals had closed the gap to 71-69 and with :47.1, the gap was at one point at 71-70.  With :35.7 left, Roseau still led by one at 73-72.  Trailing by just one at 75-74 with :05.9 left, Redwood Valley had one more chance left but with the clock winding down, Cardinal senior Amy Martius' three-point shot attempt hit the front of the rim and Roseau staved off a HUGE upset bid.  When you glance at the final stats of this game, you'll see that Redwood Falls actually had the slight edge on the boards at 36-32 although they did suffer more turnovers at 19 than Roseau did with 12.  And a lot of that I think has to be attributed to the Borowicz duo of Kacie and Katie who just have that uncanny ability to do whatever they have to do to help their team win games and Kacie told me afterward that "It's kind of weird, but we just look at each other at times and we know when we have to pick it up."  And they did that on this night. 

The nightcap over on the Williams Arena side featured Proctor taking on Caledonia; two teams that I'm not at all familiar with but was certainly more than willing to let this battle unfold to see what would happen.  Caledonia appeared to have the upper hand early on in this one; as the Warriors held an 8-4 lead by the 13:30 mark and that lead would grow to 12-4 a little more than a minute later and Caledonia's pressure defense wasn't giving Proctor very much room to breathe either.  Turnovers continued to plague the Rails as Caledonia's lead grew to 21-9 with 7:15 left in the first half before Proctor finally got untracked a little bit on offense as a "3" from the left wing area at the 6:14 mark by junior guard Sam Pogatchnk got the Rails back in single-digit range again down 23-14.  Proctor would get the deficit down to seven at 29-22 with 2:07 left but the Warriors managed to increase their safety net a bit with a 4-0 push down the stretch of the first half to hold a 31-22 lead at the halftime break.  Proctor managed to get the deficit down to seven points in the first few minutes of the second half but getting closer than that was proving to be a tough nut to crack with turnovers and other mistakes still plaguing the Rails.  With  13:17 left, Proctor was able to cut the deficit down to six points on a "3" by Pogatchnik at 34-28 and a bit later Pgatchnik would strike again with a lay-up that had the deficit at four points at 34-30.  But Caledonia quickly responded; building their lead back to nine points at 39-30 at the 11:30 mark and Warrior senior forward Katie Tornstrom soon got that lead up to double-digits with her "3" at the 9:20 mark to make it 42-31.  Still, Proctor had enough pizazz left in them to crawl back into single-digit range at 42-36 with just over five minutes left but Caledonia would not open the door any further than that and advanced into the Class AA semifinals with a with a 56-44 victory.  A check of the final box score on this night shows that Proctor actually wound up with a 35-30 edge on the boards but, at the same time, were done in by 16 turnovers compared to the ten that Caledonia had.  Now, neither team shot the lights out by any stretch on this night but here's a stat that really stands out like a sore thumb.  Proctor was only 12-24 from the charity stripe for 50% on this night.  That's simply not going to get the job done in a relatively close game and let's leaving a LOT of points on the table.  Caledonia Head Coach Scott Sorenson was in agreement when I mentioned to him that his team's pressure defense really took Proctor out of any real comfort zone on this night.  "Yeah, absolutely.....We thought if we put pressure on them, we'd wear them out and their legs wouldn't be as good or we could pick up some big turnovers and go the other way with the fast break but we 'locked in' pretty good tonight."  Tornstrom's 25 points led all scorers on this night to pace the Caledonia attack while surprising eighth-grader Alexis Schroeder had 13 points and senior Heidi Bolduan tallied ten points.  Junior Morgan Nylund and freshman Payton Rodberg led the way for Proctor on this night with their 11 points and junior Sam Parendo had ten points.