No Close Games But Plenty of Entertainment in Class A Quarterfinals
March 27, 2008

Minnesota Transitions, Cass Lake-Bena, Ellsworth, and Norman County East-Twin Valley advanced to the semi-final round of the Minnesota State High School Basketball tournament with double-digit victories in the opening round.

The first two games featured high-scoring teams, Minnesota Transitions and Cass Lake-Bena, although neither approached its season average (94.7 points for Transitions and 98.1 for Cass-Lake Bena). The Panthers of Cass Lake-Bena and their scoreboard-lighting ways are familiar to tournament fans, but the Wolves Minnesota Transitions was making its first appearance at state. In fact, this is the first time any Minnesota charter school has reached the state tournament.

The Wolves had no trouble with Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton in the opening game, which tipped off a minute before 11 a.m. at Mariucci Arena. Senior guard Virgil Baker popped a couple of three-pointers in an opening 13-0 run. The J-W-P Bulldogs tried a zone, to which Transitions responded with a stall. Leading 26-5 with a little over eight minutes to play in the first half, Transitions had its perimeter players hold the ball, then toss it to another as a Bulldogs player approached. The stall continued for over a minute before the Bulldogs committed a foul. The Wolves then came out shooting again and had a 39-10 halftime lead.

Using speed and outside shooting, Minnesota Transitions continued the carnage in the second half. With under nine minutes to play, Kyle Noreen took a rebound and fired an outlet pass to Baker, who went in alone and dunked the ball for a 64-19 lead. The final was 77-32 with Baker leading all scorers with 20 points, including four three-pointers. He also had 10 rebounds. Six-eight sophomore forward Kevin Noreen had 18 points, six rebounds, five steals, and three blocks. Jeron Jackson had seven offensive rebounds and eight overall for the Wolves, who nearly achieved their season average with 44 rebounds. Transitions had 16 rebounds, 10 short of their season average.

Most of the J-W-P’s scoring was by two players, sophomore forward Zach Schrom with 15 and senior forward Josh Kopachek with 11. The Bulldogs were only 1-of-24 in three-point baskets and shot only 22.2 percent overall from the floor. The second game, between Cass Lake-Bena and the undefeated Bertha-Hewitt Bears had a number of lead changes in the early going, but the Panthers put on a surge near the end of the half to go into the locker room with a 42-30 lead. Nate Howard eclipsed his season scoring average of 11.2 points by scoring 15 in the first half to go with five rebounds. Joel Salscheider had 12 points while his brother, Nate, had five points and six rebounds in the half.

For the Bears, senior guard Marcus Riewer scored 12 points in the first half and added another 15 in the second half, keeping the Bears in the game for a time. Nate Salscheider had to go to the bench after picking up his fourth foul midway through the second half, and Bertha-Hewitt got as close as four points. A couple minutes later, however, Salscheider came back and hit a field goal and then a three-pointer to open the lead back up. The Panthers went on to a 79-61 win.

Nate Salscheider has 16 points and nine rebounds, and Joel Salscheider had 22 points with five rebounds, three blocks, and five steals. Nate Howard led the Panthers with 23 points and had five rebounds while sophomore guard Martin Wind had 12 points and seven rebounds. Marcus Riewer of Bertha-Hewitt led all scorers with 27 points. The focus in the third game, between the defending Class A champion Ellsworth Panthers and Granada-Huntley-East Chain Mustangs was on Ellsworth senior guard Cody Schilling, who came into the tournament needing 23 points to break the Minnesota boys’ basketball career record of 3,365 points, held by Isaiah Dahlmann of Braham. While Schilling is known for his scoring, averaging 27.9 points per game, he was also averaging 9.5 points per game and 10.0 assists per game.

However in the first half, the Panthers’ leader was 6-8 sophomore center Trevor Gruis, who scored 14 points and grabbed nine rebounds, four of them off the offensive boards. Schilling scored nine points in the half (all within the first nine minutes), making only 4-of-11 from the field (his shooting percentage for the season coming into the tournament was 65 percent). Schilling had four rebounds and four assists in the half, one of his assists coming on an alley-oop pass to Gruis.

Schilling had an even prettier pass in the second half, bouncing one from the top of the key to Weston DeBerg underneath. DeBerg took the pass and laid it in for a 49-33 lead. At this point, Schilling had 15 points and needed eight more in the game to pass Dahlmann. He had scored three consecutive field goals earlier in the second half, each of which had increased Ellsworth’s lead to 10 points. He made two more baskets a little later in the half but was still four points short coming into the final two minutes.

Schilling scored on a layup and was fouled with 1:45 to play. He missed the free throw, which would have tied him with Dahlmann. Twenty seconds later, the Mustangs called time out, apparently so coach Robbin Celander could devise a devise a strategy to bottle up Schilling and not let him break the record in the game.

Meanwhile, Ellsworth coach Markus Okeson made it clear Schilling would have another shot. When play resumed, the Panthers passed the ball around the perimeter for about 40 seconds, before getting it to Schilling on the left baseline. Schilling moved in and connected on a jumper with 35 seconds to play to make him the state’s all-time leading scorer.

Schilling’s record-breaker capped the game’s scoring as Ellsworth won 59-41. Schilling had nine rebounds and seven assists to go with his game-high 23 points. Gruis was the only other Ellsworth player in double figures; he had 19 points and 14 rebounds. For Granada-Huntley-East Chain, Tim Garry and Dan Stensland each had 12 points.

The final game of the day, between Norman County East-Twin Valley and Chisholm, was easily the sloppiest of the session.

Returning to the Minnesota State High School League’s boys basketball tournament for the first time since 1995, the Chisholm Bluestreaks took a 23-18 halftime lead over the Eagles but folded in the second half and lost 59-42.

The defeat marked the latest chapter in the decline and fall of Iron Range basketball in Minnesota. Interestingly enough, it was Chisholm that ushered in the so-called Golden Age of Iron Range Basketball in 1934 when the Bluestreaks, coached by Harvey Roels, won the tournament with a 29-27 win over St. Paul Mechanic Arts. Prior to that ,Roels had taken Chisholm teams to the tournament in 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933. His 1932 team lost to Thief River Falls in the 1932 finals.

The year 1934 is particularly significant in that scoring in Minnesota basketball games increased dramatically. “Between 1934 and 1956, team scoring records, on the average, doubled,” wrote Marc Hugunin and Stew Thornley in their seminal book, Minnesota Hoops. “More often than not, the new team scoring records were the handiwork of teams from the Range.” The authors go on to describe the fast-paced style of play trademarked by Chisholm and later emulated by Buhl in 1935 and 1936 tournament appearances as well the school’s consecutive state championships in 1941 and 1942.

“The pace of the game,” Hugunin and Thornley wrote, “is often dictated by the defense, and the Range was always known for an aggressive, pressing defensive style that forced their opponents to run, too.”

The Mesabi Iron Range’s string of single-class state champions came to an end in 1951 when Gilbert, under coach Wayne Keto, won the championship. Two years later, Hibbing made it to the finals but could not overcome state champion Hopkins. Minnesota’s basketball innovators had been eclipsed.

While it is true that Chisholm made a dramatic comeback to restore some of the lost luster, the fact remains that coach Bob McDonald’s Class A champions of 1973 and 1975 lost in the playoff round to Class AA champions Anoka and Little Falls. Only the 1991 Class A champions from Chisholm can be considered to be “pure,” since the playoff game between Class AA and Class A winners had been eliminated.

The Mesabi Iron Range begins near Aurora and extends through Biwabik, Gilbert, Eveleth, Virgina, Mountain Iron, Buhl, Chisholm, Hibbing, Keewatin, Nashwauk, and Coleraine. In 1961, each of these communities boasted public-school facilities for those enrolled in kindergarten through senior high school. The economy of the Range is based almost totally on the mining of iron ore and taconite. In the early 1960s, numerous mining operations began to close, and the Range economy nearly collapsed. The majority of senior classmen and classwomen from the aforementioned dozen high schools were gone from the Range before their 20th birthday. Their high schools subsequently were consolidated or absorbed by others. The 12 schools that started the 1960s are now down to seven.

It is to coach McDonald’s credit, then, that his Chisholm teams continued to show success. After all, the school’s enrollment has shrunk to 182 students. Now in his 74th year of life and 53rd year as head coach, he soldiers on as head coach of the Bluestreaks. (It should be noted that Nashwauk-Keewatin did make it to the Class A finals in 2004 only to be slaughtered there by Russell-Tyler-Ruthton, 59-29. Other than that blip, only Chisholm carries on the Iron Range Class A tradition.)

However, after watching the Bluestreaks lose on Thursday, one might be tempted to ask: Why bother? In easily the most sloppy game played in the first round of the Class A tournament at Mariucci Arena, it could be argued that neither Chisholm or the victorious team from Twin Valley deserved to win. In the first half alone, the teams combined for 22 turnovers, many of them unforced. Norman County East-Twin Valley missed all six of its free throw attempts, and Chisholm made only five out of 14.

Chisholm took a 6-2 lead on a layup by Taylor Skoglund, but Norman County East-Twin VAlley came back to take a 9-8 advantage on a layup by Jordan Hellerud. Skoglund answered with a layup of his own, and Chisholm did not relinquish the lead for the rest of the first half.

Perhaps it was because the game was being played in a hockey arena that Chisholm came out ice cold in the second half. A three-point basket by David Varriano gave the Eagles a 28-27 lead, and they never looked back.

Norman County East went on a 15-0 tear to bury the Bluestreaks. For the game, Chisholm had 19 turnovers and could only convert on six of 16 free throw attempts.

Varriano led all scorers with 18 points, followed by teammate Taylor Bennefeld with 17. Trevor Simonson led Chisholm with 16 points. The Bluestreaks’ Skoglund, who was averaging just under 21 points per game, was held to nine.