The Breakdown's Ryan James Report
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Rogers Boys Summer Showcase Recap
The Breakdown Summer Showcases tour finished up this weekend with a 48-team boys event this past Sunday. The winners of the event included Tartan, Cooper, Pierz, Rockford and Pelican Rapids and there was some outstanding showings by the state’s best including David Hanson, Nick Haugen, Carrington Tankson, Mark Sonnen and Rodney Williams Jr.
ORANGE BRACKET
Winning the Orange bracket was Pelican Rapids as they defeated St. Michael-Albertville in the final 41-38 (the games were 40 minutes running time with the exception of the final two minutes). Leading the way with a huge second half was multi-sport star Tydan Storrusten who penetrated and scored, penetrated and dished, and made several free throws resulting from his attack. Storrusten made a close contest a ten-point game at one point as he gives a full effort on both ends of the floor. Pelican also defeated Park Christian and Heritage on their way to the championship.
STMA was without the talented Theo Rothstein, a 6-foot-4 wing who was playing in Las Vegas with 43 Hoops. Rothstein has had a tremendous summer and has proven to be one of Minnesota’s top 50 players as well as a potential division one player who is likely to have division twos in the state working hard for his services.
One of class AA best’s teams for next year also competed in this bracket and that is Montevideo. The Thunderhawks played in the 5th place game of the bracket do to a numbers crunch as everyone in pool play was .500. They return several standout players and will make up one of the top backcourts in the state with 6-foot-1 Trammel Barnes and 6-foot-0 Tyler Grey coming back who combined for 37 points a game a year ago. Barnes will be one of the state’s best point guards and D-2 schools will be watching home throughout the year to see how his game progresses.
GOLD BRACKET
The highlight of the Gold bracket was watching Rodney Williams Jr play. His team played the two late games but his 11 AM match-up was watched by everyone in the building who was not playing or not a parent of a player playing. Cooper beat Mounds View 58-42 in that game and really things were not even that close. Rodney had eight dunks in this contest and several in his team’s three wins on the way to the tournament championship.
Cooper also defeated defending state champion Buffalo and Spring Lake Park in the championship game. The addition of Joe Bright and the return of several quality guards will make Cooper a force again next season. They beat Spring Lake by six but the game was never close until the final pair of minutes. Take note that Spring Lake Park was without 6-foot-5 post Cory Polta and elite 2009 point guard Shaun Jensen.
Rodney Williams of course dunked and blocked shots but his jumper continues to get a little better with every day of work. For example, Williams had a Mounds View player talking smack daring him to shoot a three so Williams smiled right at him and drained the triple. And what really stood out was his ability to open up teammates for shots off his penetration. It was a new wrinkle to his game as Rodney was creating for others on the break as well as in the halfcourt set. True this was not against the national competition but he was doing a better job of opening up teammates off the bounce while competing in the Minnesota high school ranks.
WHITE BRACKET
The title game of this bracket was not what you would call a thing of beauty as Pierz beat North Branch 34-28 in a true slugfest. It was hard working teams playing their top defense and the result was a scoreboard crawl. Late Pierz hit the free throws to win and it gave them a 3-0 record for the day. Pierz also beat Big Lake 68-40 and Chisago Lake 45-42.
Picking up third place in this division were the Bombers from Braham. It was truly an exciting three games for the Bombers who beat Zimmerman 39-37 in OT, they just missed getting to the title game with a 38-37 loss to North Branch, and then Bob Vaughan’s group defeated Big Lake 49-44 for third place.
In the overtime victory it was another Dahlman making things happen as Jonah Dahlman penetrated and hit the game winning shot. Jonah will be a junior this year and he’s running the point for his team showing excellent leadership skills. True there is no more Noah, Isaiah, Josh Vaughan, Thiry or Kyle Luebeck but the Bombers are still going to be tough with a nice backcourt in Jonah and David Vavra plus watch the younger Luebeck, Cody who will be a junior this year in the post. And of course Bob Vaughan returns
to run this group so you know they will pick up the victories.
Braham’s young team lost to North Branch who has a group full of hard working men. Even if they can’t score at times this team will always be in the game because of their work on the defensive end. Jake Chambers leads his team with a competitive fire and he can play both on the inside and out.
BLUE BRACKET
Picking up a very impressive win early was Apollo defeating Carrington Tankson, Zach Peterson, Dan Brown and Osseo. The Orioles were without 6-foot-8 junior post San Dower, who was at Iowa State visiting, but they had the rest of the squad but still struggled in a 63-49 loss to Apollo. Apollo was led by Kendall Smith, Ahmed Farah and Ryan Cosman who will continue to make the Eagles competitive after Whitaker/Noreen/Simon and company has left to play college basketball and/or football.
On the other side of the bracket a very impressive showing came from Irondale who crushed Becker and then beat Elk River to get to the title game. Coached by the wily Joel Andrychowicz, Irondale again looks like a hardworking team that will give people fits. Junior guard Rayveen Banks is a solid point and as quick as they come. Irondale does lose Chris Hooks who was going to go to Wisconsin-Milwaukee but now it seems he will join Arkansas-Pine Bluff on basketball scholarship.
Osseo recovered from the early loss to beat defending champion Holy Family (who did not have Trent Johnson or Cameron Cain who were in Vegas with 43 Hoops) as well as Champlin Park. Carrington Tankson went from a single figure scoring game against Apollo to record 26 and 23 points in these shorted games. Tankson is a division one talent who may make a juco stop first before he heads to a D-1 program.
The winner of the Blue bracket was the Tartan Titans who beat Champlin by 20, Apollo by 17 and Irondale by 17 in the title game. Their hardworking defensive efforts slowed down offenses in all three games and Mark Sonnen’s relentless penetration for scores at the rim and dishes to teammates was not stopped by anybody. The benefactors knocking down three-pointers were Chase
Madsen and Aaron Hoverson. And Tartan received a real nice contribution from Shawn Marlowe around the basket as the 6-foot-5 forward looks much improved with some summer post work.
Sonnen already has a pair of division-one offers while other teams are getting interested. This weekend he showed off a jam on the break-a-way one of several highlights for the day.
RED BRACKET
The red bracket was Nick Haugen’s show from start to finish. Rockford is going to be very good with Nathan Maher, Mike Mernin and Luke Mernin returning but Haugen continues to prove himself as one of the state’s best as he was beating everybody off the dribble in this event and he showed this Minnesota basketball fanatic a dunk for the first time and it wasn’t something I was expecting.
Haugen and his Rockets beat Forest Lake by six points, they crushed Anoka 65-39 and then they easily handled G-F-W 63 to 47 in the championship game. Haugen averaged 17 points a game for the second year in a row last season running the point for his team and he has been outstanding at times playing with the Minnesota Magic Elite.
Rockford will again be in the Breakdown’s Border Battle this year in Madison after they were paired with the amazingly good Lacrosse Aquinas team this past winter. Rockford lost, as did everybody else to the amazing Lacrosse team who only lost once last year. In fact, Aquinas was 4-0 vs. Minnesota last year as they also beat Caledonia, Winona Cotter, Rockford and Woodbury, all by double figure margins.
Foley also deserves some quality mention for their third place finish beating Anoka and a young Minnesota Heat AAU squad.
Rogers Girls Summer Showcase Recap
The Breakdown wrapped up its final girls tourney in Rogers on July 21st. 34 teams took the court in another exciting day of basketball.
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Centennial defeated Albany 67-61 in a high scoring game to win the Silver Bracket.
Becker defeated St. Francis in overtime 33-31 in the Gold Bracket.
New London Spicer defeated GFW in the Blue Bracket, 49-33.
Braham defeated New Ulm Cathedral in the Green Bracket, 39-36.
Maranatha won the JV Bracket over Rogers |
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