Rise Surprise: 11th Wolfe pulls the upset at AAU State

<strong>Joey Batt leads the way to 53-48 OT win over Suns Jeff</strong> There were precious few upsets in the 1^st 2 days of AAU state tournament play—the higher seeds are 34-8 with 2 freshman semi-finals yet to go as I write this on Saturday night, 3 of the 8 were of the #8 vs. #9 variety. But, we picked out one upset special right away, 1^st thing in the morning at 8 a.m., and it saw the #11 seed Rise 11^th Wolfe scramble back from a ten point deficit at 3:28 of the 4^th quarter to defeat #6 Suns 11^th Jefferson 53-48 in OT in the 2019 D1. The comeback started with a pair of 3s by Grace Dehen (Nicollet/Loyola) and Joey Batt (New Ulm), and continued with 3 FTs by Batt and Sidney Botker (Nicollet/Loyola). Madison Gehloff (Waseca) scored off an assist by Caitlin Rorman (Blue Earth) at almost exactly 1:00 for the unlikely 42-41 Rise lead. Lindsey Olson (St. Louis Park) answered with a 3 for the Suns but a Joey Batt 2 for the Rise sent things to OT. In OT, Gehloff scored from Batt, then Batt hit a 3 and Gehloff another 2 and that was all she wrote. Batt was obviously a ball of fire and a bundle of energy as she always is for the Rise and for New Ulm. The Mankato State recruit was by far the difference in this game even when she wasn’t scoring some of her game-high 20 points, with her superb ball-handling and ball-hawking. She added at least 4 rebounds and 3 steals with no turnovers that I saw. If you watched this game as a series of one-on-one matchups, you’d say the Suns had the better talent. Elaina Jones (DeLaSalle) was the 2^nd best player on the floor. She has become a real slasher who gets to the rim and finishes with contact. Unfortunately, she missed her last 4 FG attempts, granting that she got to the FT and made 4-of-6 in OT. She was also the Suns defender by far at all five positions. Jada Hood (Roseville) was solid on both ends of the court for the Suns and scored 11 points. Olson hit a couple of late 3s to keep the Suns alive down the stretch. But, in addition to Batt, the Rise also had Gehloff, who survived an 0-for-7 1^st half, then scored 11 2^nd half points on 5-of-7 shooting with a bunch of rebounds, including at least 3 on the offensive end, one of which led to Batt’s 3 late in regulation. And Rorman was a beast on the boards though this was the kind of game where scoring in the lane generally wasn’t going to happen, so 10 points, even on 4-of-11 shooting plus at least 4 offensive boards, represented a game-changing performance, too. Bottom line: The Suns had about 2.5 inches per player but the Rise made up for it with some terrific help defense while Jacey Welp and Gehloff gave Batt just enough help handling the ball to win the possession game. Unfortunately, Batt was done for the day. She had to return home for high school athletic event and without their best player the Rise went down to #3 Stars Nelson 60-43 despite Gehloff’s 16 points.