Postseason Preview: Section 1AAA
Photo courtesy of Eric Johnson of the Austin Daily Herald
Section basketball is just around the corner and as the season comes to a close, it’s time to start looking at individual sections.
Here’s the lowdown on Section 1AAA:
Favorite: Austin
The Packers are the runaway team to beat in Section 1AAA given their size, athleticism, skill and depth.
Both Gach and Duoth Gach might be the two best players in the section and their collective ability to dominate a game with their perimeter shooting, defense and transition game presents challenges few teams in the section are equipped to handle.
Tate Hebrink, another junior is an underrated third scorer for them and if left open, can easily pile up 20-plus points on triples.
Oman Oman, Moses Issa and Jany Gash can all play as well with Issa and Gash are two of the team’s key players at the head of the Packers’ zone press.
Oman is the man in the middle and the only guy with much beef to him inside. He doesn’t look to shoot a whole lot but does a lot of the little things when it comes to freeing up the bevvy of shooters.
The Packers style of play is something that helps them win a lot of games, but it could also hurt them against the right team. They rely on playing fast and using their tremendous collective athleticism to overwhelm inferior competition. That’s served them well as they’ve won 24 games including Northfield twice, Faribault twice, Caledonia and Byron. But if there’s a way to beat them, it’s by slowing the game down and making them face a set defense consistently. If they don’t force turnovers, will they have the discipline to grind out a win? They might not need to in sections, but they’ll need to at some point.
In the mix: Northfield, Byron
The Raiders sure made the rebuild look easy. After graduating a great senior class that included Luke Harris — now at University of Minnesota, Duluth — Northfield had to integrate a number of inexperienced and young players into the rotation.
Hunter Koep is a physical presence inside and while he doesn’t have a great deal of height, his combination of strength and quickness makes him as tough a player to guard as there is in the section. Alex Rasmussen is a junior who should continue to draw interest from DII and DIII schools (maybe lesser on the DIII with a strong summer) because of his ability to score in a variety of ways and control the pace.
Mason Zick, Carter Hodapp and Nick Zabel give the Raiders three wing players who can shoot from anywhere on the floor and Isaiah Walker is a junkyard dog inside. The Raiders gave the Packers two good games and always seem to play them tough in the postseason. If there’s a team that seems equipped to give them a run in sections, it’s Northfield.
Byron is an interesting team because the Bears got off to a horrendous start, going winless in their first four games. They came back to win 15 games and while they didn’t play a Big 9 schedule, the Hiawatha Valley League features some of the best small-school talent in the state.
Mike Coble is a top 2018 talent on the wing and the Bears have a good mix of players to go with him in Bjorn Knutson, Caden Blazing and Kaden Koski inside.
The Bears earned the No. 4 seed, which would potentially set up a second round game with the Packers in Rochester. It’s hard to see Byron winning that game, but the Bears certainly could make that a more interesting semifinal game than one would’ve thought.
Best First-Round Bout: Winona vs. Stewartville
The Tigers landed the No. 6 seed in the section which means a date with Winona in the first round of the postseason. Winona’s been the definition of streaky this season, spotting win streaks of three and five before ending the year on a two-game win streak, but also enduring a five-game losing streak to start the year and a pair of three-game losing stretches during the season.
The Winhawks beat Stewartville by nine in the final week of the season.
The juicy matchup to watch is inside where the Winhawks have a pair of good bigs in senior Oscar Hedin and junior Dakota Matthees while the Tigers go-to guy is Carter Goski. Goski and Matthees are players to watch this offseason as well because they could both should draw plenty of college suitors.
Section Outlook
Austin’s got a much, much better record than any team in this section and while the Packers are one of the top five or six teams in AAA, the section as a whole is down. With that in mind, they should be the heavy favorite to get back to the state tournament and there shouldn’t be a whole lot of drama in that trek.
Red Wing and Byron could be an intriguing first round game if only to see just how much the HVL schedule prepared the Bears versus what a Big 9 schedule did to a rebuilding Wingers squad. Red Wing’s got Kipp Adams who can put up points in a hurry. But he’s the only guy averaging more than 10 points per game.
Northfield is a sneaky contender to them though and while the Raiders don’t have the collective athleticism to win a game playing Austin’s style, they certainly have the ability to pull an upset if they can slow the game down to a halfcourt pace.
Ultimately, the Packers have so much talent that it’s hard to envision them not getting to the state tournament.
Section Seedings
- Austin
- Northfield
- Winona
- Byron
- Red Wing
- Stewartville
- Kasson-Mantorville
- Albert Lea