State Tournament Quarterfinals: Top 10 AA performers

The big dogs show up for the big games. As much as we love evaluating and profiling up-and-coming talent – that is what we do best, after all – when it comes to the State Tournament you can be pretty sure it will be the biggest names who take center stage during the biggest week of the season. That was certainly the case in class AA on Tuesday where we saw one of the greatest performances of all time and a whole lot more. Glencoe-Silver Lake slips past Minnehaha Academy 58-57 [player_tooltip player_id="109752" first="Miah" last="Monahan"] & Mylea Monahan – guards, Glencoe-Silver Lake The Monahans have made quite a mark on Glencoe-Silver Lake basketball, a legacy that will live on long after all of them have moved on. There was McKenna, who has excelled at Grand View University in Michigan. There was Maddie, who has been a standout performer at the Division 1 level with Drake. And more recently there has been Miah, the all-everything senior and Eastern Illinois commit. On Tuesday night, we witnessed the coming-out party for the newest star in the Monahan clan. That would be the 8th grader Mylea, whose season is building to a crescendo at just the right time. Mylea showed signs late last season that she was ready to contribute in a major way and that is exactly what she has done this winter. Miah and Mylea combined for 43 points in the Panthers impressive come-from-behind (way behind!) win over Minnehaha Academy. They were everywhere, which is what we’ve come to expect from Miah. What we saw from Mylea was more of the same. She was calm, cool and collected, and used her on-court intelligence to make one successful play after another. She is a good passer and a strong defender, and she can get up and down the floor at pace. I guess that’s what we have come to expect from all of the Monahans. Did we mention their dad Jeff is the coach? [player_tooltip player_id="109128" first="Telia" last="Graham"] – junior forward, Minnehaha Academy Last year Telia was a little bit in the background at Minnehaha, playing in the shadows of the great [player_tooltip player_id="110532" first="Mia" last="Curtis"]. But when Mia went off to Dartmouth last fall, it was Graham’s turn to step up and make it happen. She is a special talent and has used her natural abilities and highly developed skills to step into the spotlight and shine. By all measures Graham has had a great season. That continued Tuesday in the quarterfinal round at the State Tournament. The 6’0 forward made a statement early, scoring nine points in the first four minutes of the Redhawks’ encounter with GSL. That sparked MA to go on a run that resulted in an 18-point lead before halftime. Graham is an incredible athlete with leaping ability that is among the very best in Minnesota. She’s long and lean and quick. Over the past 18 months Telia has honed her touch around the basket, improved her shooting from distance and become a much better rebounder. Telia is a scholarship-level talent who can also defend all five positions. Ultimately Glencoe-Silver Lake pulled off an impressive comeback but Graham finished with 21 points and left us with a positive impression to end the season. Albany eliminates Pelican Rapids 41-12 [player_tooltip player_id="109739" first="Paige" last="Meyer"] – senior guard, Albany It may be the ultimate compliment to a highly accomplished player when the opposing team orients its entire approach to a game towards stopping you from excelling. We’ve certainly seen that a lot in games involving Kneepkens, but with little success. We saw it again on Tuesday when Pelican Rapids determined that its most-likely path to victory was to slow the game to a standstill to stop Meyer from doing what she does best – run and gun. The strategy was an abject failure, and made for some really bad basketball to watch. It was also naive. Meyer is simply too good. She was patient and precise, and she repeatedly used her speed, quickness and physicality to penetrate the phalanx of PR defenders assigned the task of preventing just that. She finished with just 14 points but was dominant in every way. Pelican Rapids scored just 3 points in the second half and 12 in all. There’s a reason Meyer will play at the Division 1 level next fall at South Dakota State. Her opponent had a painfully close view of that on Tuesday. Providence Academy knocks off Duluth Marshall 94-91 [player_tooltip player_id="2126" first="Gianna" last="Kneepkens"] – senior guard, Duluth Marshall [player_tooltip player_id="252381" first="Maddyn" last="Greenway"] – 7th grade guard, Providence Academy [player_tooltip player_id="57963" first="Maria" last="Counts"] & [player_tooltip player_id="148338" first="Grace" last="Counts"] – junior & sophomore forwards, Providence Academy We have already chronicled this game extensively, and there’s really not much more to say about it. Senior guard [player_tooltip player_id="2126" first="Gianna" last="Kneepkens"] of Duluth Marshall delivered the single greatest offensive game in the history of girls basketball in Minnesota. It’s now two days later and it’s still difficult to fathom how she scored 67 points. Amazingly enough, Marshall was eliminated in a thriller thanks to the play of the three girls from Providence. 7th grader [player_tooltip player_id="252381" first="Maddyn" last="Greenway"] had a debut for the ages, scoring 32 points for the Lions. Big forwards [player_tooltip player_id="57963" first="Maria" last="Counts"] and [player_tooltip player_id="148338" first="Grace" last="Counts"] combined for 41 points and dominated the glass. It was a terrific outing for all of them and these four easily made our list of Top 10 AA performers. New London-Spicer beats Lake City 78-49 Mackenzie Rich & Emma Hanson – senior guard/forward, New London-Spicer The one exception to our ‘big names in big games’ premise occurred in New London-Spicer’s dismantling of Lake City. That’s primarily because NLS, in spite of its long-term run of success, remains relatively off the radar. They just don’t have a ton of so-called ‘names’ on their roster, and they don’t play in a lot of high-profile games until March. What they have is a team full of really solid contributors who win in an all-together fashion. This week it was Rich and Hanson who got the job done. The pair of 5’7 senior guards came out firing and that made all the difference. The game was only a few minutes old and Rich had already made four three-point baskets, sparking NLS to a 22-3 lead. Between the two of them, Rich and Hanson accounted for eight threes in all and combined for 50 points, about double their season averages. That certainly caught our attention and reminded us that the Wildcats are a big-time threat to win it all in class AA. Top photo: Utah commit [player_tooltip player_id="2126" first="Gianna" last="Kneepkens"] of Duluth Marshall.