Team of the Week #6 Mahtomedi Zephyrs
Mahtomedi and Apple Valley won the 2 biggest holiday tournaments—and I mean true tournaments where winners play winners and there’s a true championship game and all of that. And I mean biggest in that each had 8 teams including many…
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Continue ReadingMahtomedi and Apple Valley won the 2 biggest holiday tournaments—and I mean true tournaments where winners play winners and there’s a true championship game and all of that. And I mean biggest in that each had 8 teams including many of the state’s top-ranked Class AAAA and AAA teams.
Then-#5 Apple Valley beat then-#3 Centennial fairly easily in Roseville, while Mahtomedi had to grind out three tight wins against Mounds View, Wayzata and Park at Hill-Murray. But Mahtomedi turned the tables by routing Apple Valley for Team of the Week honors, by a tally of almost 4-to-1.
Then, in another turnabout, Mahtomedi was no sooner entered into our Team of the Week poll than the Zephyrs lost this week to Class AAA rival St. Paul Como 71-67. It goes to show you that even junior forward Emma Grothaus needs help. At Hill-Murray, Grothaus scored 45 points in the 3 games while senior guard Marisa Gustafson scored 41. Meanwhile, guards Josey Underwood and Annika Sougstad each had 2 solid games. So there were 3 major contributors in each game.
Then, against Como, Grothaus broke loose for 35 point. Because she had to. Nobody else was scoring. Gustafson had 7, Underwood 6 and Sougstad just 2.
That’s gotta be worrisome since Como is in the same section, 4AAA, as Mahtomedi and, not surprisingly, “Getting to the state tournament is for sure our #1 go this season,” Grothaus says. “We didn’t lose any of our players from last year, so we have lots of varsity experience and, yeah, we hope to be there this year.”
For the season now, Grothaus is averaging 21 ppg, Gustafson 12, Sougstad 10 and Underwood 6. Experience shows that the Zephyrs need 3 of the 4 to be productive to beat good opponents.
After beating Maranatha 81-71 in our Game of the Week a couple weeks ago, coach Eric Prose said, “ We can run, but we shot the ball too early, one pass, two passes. We’ve got to be more disciplined.”
Don’t forget Prose assisted Park coach Stephanie Tolkinen for many years and it was Park and Tolkinen who injected some discipline into Mahtomedi’s holiday experience before losing 32-28. Prose probably didn’t mean that much discipline. But maybe a little bit of that discipline was forgotten at Como.
“But it’s early in the year,” Prose said after the Mahtomedi win. “I’m happy with where we are, but there’s things we can clean up.” I suspect that after Como, there’s still “things we can clean up,” but I also doubt that he’s gone anywhere near the panic button. He’s still got the best record in the section at 8-2 and the best record in the Metro East Conference, though there have been only two conference games yet, neither of them involving Mahtomedi.
But Mahtomedi opens its conference season tonight and has 3 conference games in the next week. And, the section is 41-29 overall, so cleaning things up remains important, and now would be the time.
For the record, our expectation continues to be that Mahtomedi wins the Metro East Conference fairly easily. Section 4AAA is tightening up, however, as St. Anthony and Fridley have had unexpected success, the defending champions from Como are just 5-5 but lurking, and you can never count Hill-Murray or DeLaSalle out of it. Still, to win 4AAA, you’re probably going to have to go through Mahtomedi, our Team of the Week #6.