Minnesota Playoff Central – The Stars of Wednesday

<p>Players stepped up on Tuesday.  [player_tooltip player_id="957198" first="Bryce" last="Boyd"].  [player_tooltip player_id="774800" first="Karsten" last="Clay"].  Riley Larson.  Also a career ended but we think schools should check him out, that’s Hunter Hannuksela. </p> <p><strong>Playoff Central</strong>.  Two games Playoff Central had our eyes on were Holy Angels vs St. Paul Highland Park, and Northfield vs Rochester Century.  The two teams that we thought would win (AHA and Northfield) earned those wins.  AHA senior [player_tooltip player_id="957198" first="Bryce" last="Boyd"] (future UST football player) won the match-up against Joey Kottke with Boyd doubling Kotte’s scoring output (16 to 8) while having a big defensive game.  Then there was the 17 point, 5 board effort from Rob Issa, a AHA junior.  Issa stepped up provided an edge that Highland Park couldn’t match.  As far as Northfield, [player_tooltip player_id="774800" first="Karsten" last="Clay"] stepped up to score 20 pushing his team to a 64-54 win.  </p> <p><strong>Upset City</strong>.  Twelve seed International Falls defeated 5th Eveleth-Gilbert in what looks like a big upset but the Broncos were a .500 team knocking off a 12-win squad so it was more a minor upset.  But the biggest upset of the evening!  International Falls is a veteran team and the senior group of Bryant Koenig, Riley Larson, and Cullen Rein led the way.  Junior [player_tooltip player_id="958805" first="Jett" last="Tomczak"] joined them in double figures. The biggest momentum boost of the game was likely the Riley Larson four basket run in the first half that pushed the lead to double digits. </p> <p><strong>The Big Stage.  </strong>Class A basketball is everywhere on the schedule with playoff games all over the state.  Cleveland versus New Ulm Cathedral is surely one of the top games of the night.  The NUC Greyhounds are 11-6 and playing top ten ranked Cleveland in the 4/5 game. </p> <p>Most eyes will be on Section 4AAAA though.  White Bear Lake led by top sophomore [player_tooltip player_id="962200" first="Jack" last="Janicki"] facing East Ridge and their top playmaker [player_tooltip player_id="850708" first="Kendall" last="Blue"].  That’s the 3/6 game.  In the 4/5 game you can see Tartan (13-4) versus St. Paul Central (10-2).  [player_tooltip player_id="957203" first="Dewayne" last="Thompson"] leads the Titans with 14 a game while [player_tooltip player_id="958752" first="Gedeon" last="Musabyimana"] and [player_tooltip player_id="957623" first="Kaden" last="Doram"] lead Central.  [player_tooltip player_id="774927" first="Curtis" last="Favors"] versus [player_tooltip player_id="957623" first="Kaden" last="Doram"] will be excellent basketball.  </p> <p><strong>Tip of the Hat to the Career</strong>. A senior bucket getter that local college coaches may want to check on is Hunter Hannuksela. Hunter is 6-foot-4 wing and a really good athlete that has some of the best senior guard bounce in the state (a couple of the dunks in the video below are impressive). Hunter scored 27 points a game this year making 48 percent of the 14-15 shots he took a game (70 percent foul shooter).  Hunter also grabbed twelve boards a game for Mesabi East.  </p> <p><iframe src="//www.hudl.com/embed/video/3/14752241/5f57cb240c53fe08f051d8b9" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>