Waconia 88 Becker 53: Five Things to Know

<!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The Waconia Wildcats picked up a running time win over Becker 88-53 in dominating fashion. What are five things to know? We break that down now!</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>One. 2-0</strong>. Waconia is 6-11 on the season but in the two games I've seen them play they crushed a .500 Becker team that has some talent and the Cats were able to beat Jefferson by 18 (thanks in large part to their ability to force [player_tooltip player_id='1151197' first='Daniel' last='Freitag'] into scoring in spurts and not in full game consistencies). The point I am making there is that this team has the potential to be really dangerous on any given night. Junior Gavin Olson, Freshman [player_tooltip player_id='1560741' first='Will' last='Kirsch'], Junior [player_tooltip player_id='1434056' first='Jackson' last='Hayes'], Junior bull Christopher Fulford, and Senior [player_tooltip player_id='1223098' first='Ty' last='Miller'] give them five guys that can score on you when they get the right touches. And all of them got the right touches to score last night which is how Waconia scored 88 points! Remember Waconia did just beat BSM, but then again they allowed Chanhassen to score 98 points last Thursday. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Two. Gavin Olson</strong>. I feel like Gavin is going to be a player that good AAU teams are going to be fighting over (if he is a guy that has interest in playing AAU this spring and summer at a high level) and when you do that it means college coaches will likely be fighting over you at some point. The growth of his game in the last half year has been fun to watch. He reminds me a lot of Burt Hedstrom who was at Minnetonka and UST in terms of where he was as a junior and how hard and smart he competes. Gavin has a touch that he can release from a lot of different angles with positive results and he's a driven, aggressive player that battles to space. Olson had 21 points, five boards and four assists making all his foul shots (6), all his threes (3), and scoring on 6 of 8 attempts overall. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Three. The Waconia Junior Class</strong>. This junior group at Waconia has a chance to do some good things. We just talked about Olson, but we need to dive into Hayes and Fulford too. Hayes is your inside-out forward who scored off of a good touches both in the post, and facing the cup as a stretch forward. I was really surprised at the quality of post position he got and how well he held it into the catch. Jackson totaled 15 points and 8 boards. Speaking of post position, Fulford is more of a hold the spot, catch, and power finish. Or move off ball to catch and finish. Fulford had 12 points and six boards last night. [player_tooltip player_id='1695828' first='Tate' last='McDonald'] is a junior worker guard who gets good minutes too and all four of these juniors start along with Kirch (the freshmen with a magical touch and feel for the game at such a young age, he had 16 points on 7 of 11 shooting).</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Four. [player_tooltip player_id='1223098' first='Ty' last='Miller'].</strong> Miller did not play all that much but when he did I really liked some of the things Miller did for Waconia. After sitting the first 6-7 minutes of the half he came in with patience and moved the ball where it needed to be (3 assists and a lot of good passes). Miller also had a really nice move curling at the top, beating his man after recognition of a poor close, and then shoulder turning to score. Had some active buckets, a corner three, rebounded well, got a nice block, and did some really good things in his 13-14 minutes. Sounds like he has been hurt, when he gets to 24-25 minutes or whatever this team has even more potential.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Five. [player_tooltip player_id='1625007' first='Julias' last='Hendricks']</strong>. [player_tooltip player_id='962262' first='Brady' last='Paumen']'s arm is in a sling which is really tough for Becker because Brady is able to do so much. [player_tooltip player_id='1180134' first='Alex' last='Weiss'] and Kyan Bloomquist are good players for the Bulldogs and I thought [player_tooltip player_id='1628775' first='Sawyer' last='Brown'] played well last night too. But with Paumen there is only so much space for Hendricks - who is scoring 18 points a game - to work. Hendricks is a slashing 6'5 senior wing that covers a lot of ground with a quick first step and he just blows into the lane to lift for the short jumper or finger roll. He's got some really good potential to be a nice D3 talent and when he adds some core strength I really think he can take an even bigger step forward. Scored 15 points on 6 of 16 shooting. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph -->