IOWA PREP BB: Trojans crush Creston in third meeting, advance to Class 3A Substate Final

Atlantic wins 19th straight game with 68-48 playoff win over Creston

By Drew Herron - NT Sports Editor / Feb. 23, 2013

GLENWOOD – They say it’s difficult to defeat a team three times. Friday night in Glenwood, the Trojans made it look easy.

No. 2 ranked Atlantic turned it on in the second half to knock off Creston 68-48 in their Class 3A District 15 final, handing the Panthers a loss for the third time in three meetings, and eliminating them from the tournament field.

The victory marks the 19th straight for Atlantic (22-1), who advances to face Harlan (17-6) Monday night in a Class 3A Sub-state final.

Postponed for one day and relocated because of a winter storm, Atlantic hit the neutral floor Friday night in Glenwood with a stronger will to win than did Creston, and it played out like that over 32 minutes.

“I really didn’t think we could come down here and beat Creston by 20 (points),” Trojans coach Steve Blazek said afterwards. “My hat is off to our kids for that. Creston is a fine basketball team, and they had a great year, and we just feel fortunate that we are moving on.”

Atlantic senior Sam Markham turned in one of the grittiest performances of his career, finishing with 22 points to lead all scorers.  Although such point production is impressive on its own, the effort proved downright colossal if you factor in style points.

Markham collided with two players while fighting for an offensive rebound midway through the third quarter, when he hit the floor hard, his head sandwiched between the court and Creston senior Luke Neitzel on top of him.

Markham got up slowly with a bleeding gash above his left eye. He left the game momentarily to get bandaged up, and then came back with a vengeance, hitting two jumpers in the final 30 seconds of the quarter. The second of which drove Atlantic ahead 47-37 at the close of the third frame, and put them on a victory footing.

Sixteen of Markham’s 22 points came in the second half, 14 of them he scored with a bandage wrapped around his head after the collision.

“He did it at both ends of the floor,” coach Blazek says of Markham. “He got a couple of big steals and a couple of tough baskets. I thought we played unselfishly at the offensive end.”

Atlantic led 13-12 after one quarter, and 29-28 at the half.

Then, in the third quarter, the teams traded the lead twice with ties at 30-30 and 32-32 before Atlantic broke off a 15-5 run to close out the frame.

With 4:50 left, Atlantic senior Chad Christensen forced a steal and fed it up-court to Markham for a four-point lead at 36-32, and Creston was never relevant again. A moment later, Stuart Hoegh coolly drained a 3-pointer from in front of the Trojans’ bench, and the Trojans were on their way.

Creston’s shooting touch grew increasingly icy, though the Trojans’ defense played a role in aiding that.

Second half adjustments had allowed Atlantic to deny Creston the lane off the dribble and smothered the Panthers ability to get the ball into the low post, forcing them to settle for contested jump shots.

Neitzel had 16 of his 22 points in the first half, when Creston as a team shot 69 percent from the field. In the second, he and teammate Briar Evans were held to just six points apiece after the two combined for 25 of the team’s 29 in the first half.

Coach Blazek says defensive tact was what probably turned the tide.

“I think (the difference) was Stuart Hoegh’s defense on Neitzel, and Harrison Hoegh’s defense on Evans,” he says. “Defensively on the box, and keeping Neitzel out of the lane off the dribble were pretty big keys.”

In the fourth quarter, Atlantic built on its lead that ballooned to 15, 17, then 20 points. The Trojans finished 22-of-27 from the line.

Atlantic won the turnover battle 18-4, a stark comparison between two top-five ranked squads. Even more surprising is the way Atlantic tallied those, not by overwhelming full court pressure, but more deliberate as the Trojans’ half court defense shut down passing lanes.

“It’s an advantage all year for us…the turnover margin,” coach Blazek said. “But 18-4 is pretty good for us.” 

Atlantic advances now to the Class 3A Substate 8 Final Monday night at Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln, where they will face another team for the third time this season. Harlan emerges from District 16, having defeated Carroll 51-43 Friday night in Denison.

It’s one more opportunity to dig deep, and focus on business as the team continues to peak.

“There have been times when we haven’t shot the ball real well, but this group of kids just finds a way to win,” coach Blazek says. “We’ve been pretty good at the end of games, grinding things out, making our free throws, and not turning the ball over.”

Game Scoring (02/22):

ATLANTIC (22-1): Sam Markham 22, Dalton Franken 19, Stuart Hoegh 12, Chad Christensen 7, Jared Fulk 4, Harrison Hoegh 3, Joseph Walker 1     Free Throws: 22/27

CRESTON (19-4): Lucas Neitzel 22, Briar Evans 15, Colby Taylor 6, Trey Thomsen 3, Kainen Somers 2     Free Throws: 5/8

Think about it

MN HOCKEY: Top seeds rolling

Minnesota Prep Hockey Sectionals: The top seeds combined to score 90 goals in seven games Thursday night (Hill-Murray yet to play). In Lakeville South's 19-0 win, they handed out 30 assists. U-recruit Justin Kloos had 8 and finished with 10 pts.

1) Lakeville South 19-0 over Winona, 2) Edina 15-1 over Kennedy 3) Eagan 12-0 over Rosemount 4) Hill-Murray Sat. vs Tartan 5) Maple Grove 16-1 over North Metro 6) Minnetonka 12-0 over Minneapolis 7) Duluth East 7-0 over St. Francis 8) Moorhead 9-0 over Monticello

Big Fat Nothing

I don't know what to blog, so I won't. Just trying to make sure I update this for the first time in years. Looking for a better way to consolidate my my efforts in social mediums.

Big 10 Football: Minnesota Gophers coach Tim Brewster is an idiot

"I thought it was a poor decision by a head football coach, and he will have to live with it."

-Tim Brewster shaming Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema for going for two points late in

Why not start taking action on if Minnesota head coach Tim Brewster will finish out the season?

Will there be a player mutiny? Will the school's president or AD Joel Maturi--who might be on thin ice for hiring Brewster in the first place and last winter extending his deal despite a 6-7 record--be forced to make a change before the Gophers limp through the rest of their schedule, likely to finish 1-11.

Will he be able to admit this didn't work, and he had made a mistake?

Time will force those questions to answers, but after Saturday's loss at Wisconsin and his tizzy fit in the post game handshake with Badgers coach Bret Bielema, Brewster looks like a defeated man full of self-pity and perhaps resigned to the fate that hangs over his head.

Maturi fired Glen Mason on New Year's Eve of 2006--abruptly--after an embarrassing loss to Texas Tech in the Insight Bowl, a record-setting defeat that saw the Red Raiders score 31-unanswered points to force overtime and ultimately win 44-41.

Unnerved by the collapse and the clock ticking on the calendar year that would bring Mason a scheduled bonus, Maturi pulled the plug on Mason and called a hastily put together press conference long past dark on New Year's eve to make it official.

Mason seemed slow or perhaps incapable of reaching the Rose Bowl, and Gophers fans settled for a string of Music City or Insight or Sun Bowls. In 10 years that his Gophers teams went 67-57 overall, Mason went to seven bowls and won three of them. All the while, developing a pipeline of NFL running backs and running a Big 10 program that was mediocre at worst.

Plateau-ed out perhaps, or the proverbial sin of trading a bird in the hand for the prospect of two in the bush, Maturi and Minnesota overreached.

They have a two-year-old outdoor stadium on campus that draws far less interest than it ought to be afforded for a beautiful piece of architecture in its infancy. And why should they come to see this year's team (Brewster's fourth) lose to the likes of South Dakota (the Coyotes?), and Northern Illinois. USC filled the stadium for an afternoon, but the Gophers blew that too, falling hard in the fourth quarter that made the eventual 32-21 score seem to be almost a lie.

Minnesota has bleed in-state talent for years to Notre Dame or USC in particular, but Mason was able to keep some of those 3 or 4 star guys from the state staying in Minneapolis. Brewster has not only failed terribly at that, but it turns out the top-notch talent that made his recruiting grades exciting...those guys turned out to be a bunch of thugs who largely didn't pan out.

Perhaps Brewster ought to consider himself lucky that he plays in a market and city where the Vikings' legacy endures, the Twins have a new ballpark and won the AL Central again, and the Wild and Timberwolves are starting up again.

Huh, the Gophers football team sucks? Who knew.

Watch this clip of Brewster complaining about Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema running up the score on his team. The noise from a tired and defeated man.

Iowa Hawkeyes coach Kirk Ferentz

Happy Dawn to a new Decade…2010!

When you were a kid, what did you think 2010 would look like and what does it look like to you now? It’s a big change, this New Years, if only we start to refer to years with “Twenty” as the prefix, rather than “Two thousand and ___.”

Both Iowa football teams are headed to a Bowl Games and the Hawkeyes got the Orange Bowl for the second time in seven years and Iowa State plays my beloved Minnesota in that NFL Network Insight Bowl. If you know anything of Gophers football, it’s the third time there in four years. Last year, Kansas beat Minnesota and in 2006, Texas Tech came back from a 38-7 deficit with 7:47 left in Q3 to defeat Minnesota 44-41 in overtime, a loss that cost Glen Mason his job as head coach of the Gophers.