Sports

St. Michael-Albertville Starts Play in Wide Open Section Tourney

The boys pulled off a 20-win season, a Mississippi 8 Conference championship and a couple of scoring records this regular season. Starting tonight, none of that matters, as the Knights host Moorhead to open the Section 8-4A Tournament.

After getting a record-setting performance from your shooting guard, a share of the Mississippi 8 Conference title for the first time in recent history, 20 wins and the 400th win for your head coach, you’d think you’d get a better reward than this, wouldn’t you?

Instead, the St. Michael-Albertville boys’ basketball team, coming off one of their best regular seasons this century, has been deemed the No. 4 seed in the Section 8-4A tournament, thanks to the new QRF Scoring system.

Buffalo is the section’s top seed. The same team that’s lost four games since Christmas (STMA has lost two) and fell by double digits to the Knights back on Feb. 23.

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Rogers is the No. 2 seed. The same Royals who shared the conference title but lost to both STMA (back on Jan. 26) and Buffalo by double digits.

Head coach Tim Anfenson downplays the snub, somewhat.

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“If you get that first game at home, the rest of the tournament is at St. Cloud State anyway, so it’s not a huge thing. But you’d think with 20 wins you might get a better first-round game than Moorhead, which is a pretty tough team,” he said.

To be fair, the Knights have taken some lumps that knocked them down the ladder. STMA dropped an early-season result at St. Cloud Tech, at home, on Dec. 8.

Things turned around against the Spuds, actually, back on Jan. 21. It was the second game of a back-to-back, but STMA dominated the final 15 minutes en route to a seven-point win on the road.

The next game, they dumped Rogers by 21. Those two wins started a 10-game win streak that was snapped by a blizzard last Tuesday night … a game that was schedule for Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Tuesday again.

Last Friday, the Knights’ senior corps led the squad to a final win over Monticello, 72-51. It wasn’t always pretty, but Michael Weise scored 18 points, and Herbert Tapeh nabbed 15 rebounds in the win.

“We’ve leaned heavily on those two, along with Max Babb and Michael Mooney, all season. And they’ll need to keep it going if we want to come out of the section tournament,” Anfenson, who picked up his 400th win this season, said. “The best part is they’re all just great kids. This team really plays together on the court. They’re friends off the court. There just haven’t been any troubles, and that makes your job easy. It makes it fun. Winning is fun, too.”

The tradition should continue. The Knights’ JV squad was unbeaten in conference play, and wrapped up the regular season with 20 wins, as well.

The Knights begin the postseason march at 7 p.m. tonight at the gym.


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