by Ryan James
bassgemrj@hotmail.com
  The team to beat in section 3AA is the Montevideo Thunderhawks. They face a major battle getting though a section with G-F-W, Martin County West, Minnesota Valley Lutheran, T-M-B, and others but then again they have beaten two of those teams already and they locked up the southern half of the West Central Conference already.
Leading the top ten ranked 23-3 Thunderhawks is one of Minnesota's best backcourt tandems in and . Tramel is a 60 percent shooter with a serious stat line across the board while Tyler Grey is putting up 19 points a contest.
Tyler is a 6-foot-0 shooting guard who averaged 21 points last year while shooting 47 percent from the field. Coming into this year Tyler was all-area, was the conference MVP, all-state HM, and a Breakdown Fab 40 member.
"The season is going well so far," said Grey "Right now we are 23-3, with the losses coming to Hopkins, Benson and New London-Spicer. The main goal is making it to the state tournament. That is the one thing that we have never accomplished and we challenge ourselves every night to play well and get better so that we are playing our best basketball come March."
Grey's totals on the season include 18.8 points, 3.3 rebounds, a 49 percent shooting percentage, and 50 percent from three-point range. He's also a superb free throw shooter sinking 90 percent of his tosses from the foul line.
And the most important stat Grey puts up consistently is his 4.0 GPA. Because of his ability on the floor and in the classroom Grey has a solid group of school contacting him.
 "Southwest Minnesota State, Concordia-St. Paul, University of Sioux Falls, St. John's, and Gustavus are the main schools right now," Grey explained. "I am not sure where I am going to end up at this point. I am going to play the season out and make a decision sometime this spring."
One of Montevideo's most important wins on the year was their 64-58 defeat of Willmar. Grey finished with 19 in that win while Barnes ran the show against the Willmar pressure.
"I'm just proud of the way we've been playing this season," explained Barnes to the West Central Trib after the win. "We just played good, steady basketball tonight. Nothing special. Play hard on defense and execute on offense."
In the most recent Montevideo win over Dawson-Boyd (76-61) Grey put up a quick 15 points to give his team the edge then his backcourt comrade Barnes erupted for 22 in the second half. Grey finished with 19 while Barnes had a season high 30.
In last Friday's game against MACCRAY Barnes reached the 1,000-point milestone while Grey scored point 1,661 of his career and became the all-time leading scorer in Montevideo history passing Cody Dishaw. "It's a great honor," said Grey to his local station. "Cody was the guy who really started me on the hard work of basketball and scoring. So yeah, it's a great honor but it's thanks to Cody, thanks to my teammates, thanks to the coaches, and thanks to a whole lot of other people."
But despite that honor Tyler is all about team as the Thunderhawk group has several weapons. "We have been successful because we have been a team," Grey explained. "If you look at our stats, there has not been one outlined scorer, it's been pretty even. From 18 points to 13 points we have four guys scoring in that area. That is the key to our success, that and our defense."
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