2012-13 Week 1 Impressions

The 1st week of the 2012-2013 Minnesota High School Boys Basketball Season is in the book.  Here's what caught my eye.

Wins of Note
Elk River took a 37-19 lead on Buffalo at the half and an easy 64-48 win.  No surprise that Elk River won as they are a quality team.  However, you don't expect a solid Buffalo team to be dominated like that.

Waconia def Edina 66-57.  No surprise that Penn St commit Graham Woodward went off for Edina scoring 30.  But also no surprise that nobody else was in double figures.  Hornets will need to find somebody else to consistently put the ball in the basket.

Minnehaha goes 2-0 on road trip to Perham and New London-Spicer.  Yes Perham lost a ton from last year's state team but they're still expected to make a run in 8AA.  Kaharri Carter with a big game with 21 points to lead the way.  At New London-Spicer, the Redhawks went on a 27-8 run in the last 5:30 to over come a big margin.  Redhawks get a putback at the buzzer for a 71-69 win.


St. Louis Park win at Chaska 67-51.  This would be a good win regardless but the Orioles won without Kashif Hayes.  Hayes the catalyst for the dribble drive offense that the Orioles run.  Only 1 player in double figures (DJ Pollard 15) but 10 players end up in the book.   Chaska didn't have Eric West or Kolby Seiffert in the scorebook so those are huge losses too.  Soph Jacob Hansen stepping in with 12 points after a big summer.


Northfield win at Rochester Century 78-65.  Northfield had a really bad season last year and Century has 6'10" Carter Evans (multiple D1 offers but going to Northern State).  Yes this game was 58-53 Century at Northfield last year but Century was 15-11 and Northfield only won 5 games.  Evans had a double double of 15 and 11.  Even better was that Northfield had 4 in double figures and 1 of them was not Eric Shepley who's expected to be their goto guy.

Lester Prairie/Holy Trinity is currently overshadowed in the MCAA by Maranatha and Heritage (both ranked now).  But the Bulldogs knocked off #6 Sleepy Eye St. Mary's 77-68 on their way to winning the Sleepy Eye tournament.  Nick Machemehl stuffing the stat sheet for LP/HT with 24 points, 7 boards, 5 assists and 4 steals in the SESM game.  Fun LP/HT side note is that Bethany Academy still has the old Holy Trinity Trojans banner on the wall to show them as a MCAA member.


Notable performance
Joey Witthus - Chanhassen.  Witthus with 36 points in the Storm win over Henry Sibley.  The sophomore had an outstanding summer and its obviously translating quickly to the regular season.  As to Sibley, yes it was a road game but with their experience against a young Chan team, they should have looked better.