Mounds View at Cretin-Derham Hall Observations

A fun pregame with Ziggy being ready to take over the Masters at Augusta with his green jacket. Lots of coaches in attendance including Tom Dasovich (Sibley), Dennis Bloom (Stillwater) and a late arriving Tim Theisen (Osseo). But where is Scott Howell of St. Paul Central? Some Sibley players in attendance as well as Cameron Cain of Holy Family who was sitting down the row from me (I think). I also had a nice conversation with a couple of the Forest Lake Rangers who were kind enough to come over and visit at halftime.

The CDH girls were playing Eden Prairie in the state semis in girls hockey (go figure another CDH/EP matchup) so the student section was a little sparse for CDH, but good none the less. A strange happening during warmups as the shot clock over the Mounds View basket fell out and crashed to the floor. Not the entire contraption, just the shot clock numbers part. Very strange, but they turned it off and got stuff cleaned up so there was no delay to the start of this big Suburban East showdown.

Mounds View gets out to a 7-0 lead @ 14:30 thanks to a couple of Justin Harding buckets and a Nick Bartlett 3. MV gets a bucket to make it 14-10 before a 11-0 CDH run puts CDH up 21-14 @ 7:40. John Nance and Michael Floyd (pictured) get steals for layups and Floyd concludes the run with a post up 2 off a set play (Heart). Mounds View then switches from their man D to a 1-3-1 to try and slow CDH down but it has minimal impact as Floyd gets a put back, Marcus Binns gets a layup and Seantrel Henderson gets a putback to make it 29-19 @ 3:30. The rest of the half is slow as CDH pulls it out vs that 1-3-1. 32-22 CDH at the break. Floyd with 11, Nance with 7. For MV, only 3 players scored. Bartlett with 9, Harding with 7 and Mike Schramm with 6. Bartlett really struggled with the pressure D of CDH for a minimum of 3 turnovers, 2 of which were during the run of 19-5 over 8 minutes. Cold shooting too for the Mustangs.

2 quick CDH layups to start the 2nd half lead to 2 quick MV timeouts. 36-22 CDH @ 16:16 and MV goes back to the man D. After a CDH phantom timeout at 13:07 (they call timeout, no whistle, CDH throws the ball to the ref and they still get the timeout), they go to some 1-3-1. Henderson gets 7 straight CDH points and its 43-27 CDH @ 10:45. Floyd electrifies the crowd with a steal and a power dunk on a breakaway to make it 50-32 with 9 to go. He also gets a nice 3 pt play and Nance adds a steal for 2 to make it 56-35 inside 7 minutes and the rout is on. It's 58-38 CDH @ 5:09 when CDH goes 4 corners and pours on a few more points. Floyd and Nance are done at 3:45 with the score 64-38 CDH. Final is 66-44 Raiders in a surprising blowout.

Michael Floyd with 22 to lead CDH. Seantrel Henderson with 14 and John Nance with 11. Nick Bartlett with 14 to lead Mounds View. CDH's athleticism really bothered Mounds View despite Mounds View's top 7 all being between 6'4 and 6'7. That would make a Cooper/Mounds View section semi at Rogers on March 14th very interesting as they'd have difficulty with Rodney Williams Jr and the rest of Cooper's athletes. It promises to be a classic matchup of players (MV) vs athletes (Cooper). For CDH, they will be really battle tested in 4AAAA even as the #1 seed. A semifinal game vs Tartan or Central is tough and then a final vs Stillwater or Sibley is really tough. You have to feel for Central, they could go 20-6, win their league and not even get a home game.

Michael Floyd photo courtesy of MNPhotoNet.net