Summer Week in Review, Week #3

As far as I’ve been able to tell, 10 Minnesota teams won division champions last weekend. 7 of them were at the local Fury Showdown (of course we’re only talking the 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 classes), 2 were at the Deep South Classic and one at tha All-Iowa Attack Showcase in Ames, IA. Taking them in reverse order:

• North Tartan 15U Nike defeated their sisters, North Tartan 14U Nike, 60-51 for the Silver Division championship. Of course, Tartan doesn’t compete at 15U and 14U locally. I think the 2 teams in question are North Tartan 10th EYBL and North Tartan 9th. But there are no rosters or box scores, so a person cannot tell for sure that that’s the case.

In addition to finishing 1-2, Tartan pulled a daily double, beating the hosts in not one but both semi-final games in this division. Tartan 15 Nike (10th EYBL) defeated All-Iowa Attack 9th Nike 49-36 in one semi, while Tartan 14 (9th) defeated AIA 10th Nike 66-59. Good show. But, again, no individual scoring is available.

• Taylor Hill 8 Elite made mincemeat of the field in the Deep South Classic 14U A Division, winning 4 games by scores of 90-18, 59-32, 58-14 and 53-22, or something like that. If you’ve seen their Web site, you know what I mean. Reading numbers off of their brackets is almost as hard has reading those yellow number on the light blue Fury uniforms. Again, no other information is available at this time.

• Now, the Crossfire 10th Theisen should probably be on this list. Your call. Selected winners among their 26 divisions then had interdivision playoff. CFT went 4-0 in the 16U D division, but then lost to the winner of the C division.

Fury Showdown

The Showdown had 8 division from 2021 on up, and 8 below. We cover 2021 on up. Here’s a quick review of each of those 8 divisions.

2018 Blue

First of all, Heat 11 Vang is listed as the winner but that is not supported by other information. Stars 11 Walters won Pool A at 4-0 with Heat Vang 2nd at 3-1. Stars edged Heat 44-41. Fury 2019 Gold on Pool B at 3-0, and in the bracket final, Stars Walters surprised Fury Gold 42-34. K’lynn Lewis scored 7 for the Stars, Shayla Wallin 6, Chan’el Anderson-Manning 5 and Riley Thalhuber 5. Lizzy Karp was the tournament’s leading scorer at 15 ppg for Walters, but it appears she did not play in the final. Ashley Schindele scored 9 for the Fury.

Lauryn Sicard of MN Attack with the #2 scorer at 14.8 ppg, while Ellie Carver of the Heat scored 12.7, Wallin 12, Sydney Hovland, Ella Van Kampen and Kelsea lLund, all of West Central Wildcats Blue scored 12, 12 and 11.8.

2019 Blue

The 2019 Blue division was won by Stars 9th Antl, who swept 4 games by 62 points, including a 47-36 final win over Heat 9th Hinck. For the tournament, post Emily Russo of New Prague led Antl scorers with 11 ppg, while Amme Sheforgen led Hinck at 10 pp. Overall, Kendal Coley led he division at 17 ppg.

The 2 finalists knocked out Fury 2020 Gold and Fury 2021 Blue in the semis, and the 2 declined to play one another for 3rd place. Julia Salmen and Sarah Kuma led Fury 2020 Gold with 11.7 ppg while Rachel Leerar led Fury 2021 Blue with 11.5 while Alexis Pratt added 10.7.

2020 Blue

So Minn Fury 2020 Gold, United 9th and West Central Wildcats 9 Blue all went 2-0 in pool play. SMF swept the other two in a round-robin playoff. Marisa Fritz scored 16 points to lead SMF in the round robin.

Malory Anderson of WCW9 led all scorers in the division with 17 ppg. Alana Pettis of Lady Hawks 14U was next at 13.

2020 Yellow

Heat 9th Dineen went 4-0 to take 1st in the 2020 Yellow. Karis Zezza led the Heat and the division in scoring at 10.5 ppg.

2021 Blue

A rising team so far this year is Top Flight 2021 Metro, which impressed at the Kickoff and now, here, at the Fury Showdown, going 4-0 with wins over Suns Fredenburg and Fury 2021 Gold 55-38, among others. Kate Trachsel led Top Flight with 13 and Jayla Reliford led the Fury with 11 in he final. Overall Sydni Olson led Top Flight wit 46 points in the 4 wins. Erin Lamb of So Minn Fury 2021 was next at 11 ppg.

2021 Yellow and White

The tournament Web site lists MN Basketball Acadmy 8th Pagano as the Yellow champ but, no, BBA 8 went 0-3 in their pool. West Central Wildcats 8th White went 3-0, then defeated West Central United 8th 44-32 for the division title. Tori Ratz led the Wildcats with 12 points in the final and 51 points in 4 games.

Heat 8th Wrolstad won the 2021 White division with a 4-0 record.

Summary

We’ve recorded last weekend’s results and we’ll combine them in next weekends results, then update our team rankings in the week before the AAU State Prelims. It will be fun to compare our rankings with the AAU’s seedings.

The big input to the rankings next weekend will be the results of the Mill City Invitation, an NCAA certified event with exhibition games on Friday at Kennedy and tournament on Saturday and Sunday at Kennedy and Jefferson.

Oh, and by the way…

Uncle Marc never does anything the easy way. I went to the hospital a week ago Monday to have my gall bladder removed. No big deal. Laparoscopy. In Monday. Out Monday. Well, they punctured by intestine going in and had to open me up wide to fix that and finish the job. I got out of the hospital on Saturday. No golf for the entire rest of the summer. I do not expect to be 100 percent again until June. But, I’ll be out and about before then.