Page carries Senior Night

Prologue
To Osseo for Senior night as the Orioles take on Blaine in a cross-division game.  A very nice fully picture scoreboard in place.  Only 1 side of the bleachers open.  The Jet's Pizza always quality and Sprite to go with it.  Very tame crowd.

Number of Teams I've Seen: 145 (140 games, 90 days, 50 buildings, 25 online)

Beverage Ticker: 1084.1 ounces (11870 Calories)

• Pepsi: 304.5 ounces (3800 calories)
• Coke: 209.8 ounces (2500 calories) 
• Dr. Pepper: 48 ounces (600 calories)
• Sprite Zero: 20 ounces (0 calories) 
• Sprite: 208.9 ounces (2480 calories) 
• 7 Up: 36 ounces (420 calories)
• Red Gatorade: 140 ounces (980 calories)  
• Red Powerade: 40 ounces (260 calories) 
• A&W Root Beer: 36 ounces (510 calories) 
• Mug Root Beer: 12 ounces (160 calories) 
• Barq's Root Beer: 12 ounces (160 calories)

Food Ticker:

• Hot Dogs: 27
• Walking Tacos: 7
• Pizza: 22
• Pulled Pork Sandwich: 1
• Chipotle: 1 (thanks to Bethel staff)

Game Time:
Injuries a very early story in this one.  Zach Theisen with a knee brace on and he only lasted 1:41.  Anthony Williams goes down with an apparent leg injury on the very next possession.  Add in Chike Okonkwo picking up 4 first half fouls and the bench got thin very quick.  The pace was slow with long possessions early on.  12-11 Blaine at 10:18.  Ray Mitchell on the bench with 2 fouls and Byron Bynum comes back in and gets his 3rd with 9 minutes left.  Emmette Page gets his offense going with  4 free throws and a bucket.  Osseo gives up the next 6 before Page scores off a high/low Ginobili type post feed and adds a 3.  Then Tony Strand with a 3 point play and 2 Jason Kaul 3 point plays for a 29-22 Blaine lead at 3:57.  Johnson Fallah with back to back 3s and Osseo is back within 1.  Page off the backdoor feed for a layup and in the post for 2 free throws.  Kaul beats the buzzer for a 33-32 halftime lead.

Mitchell cranking it up for 7 in a row to keep Blaine in the lead 42-41 with 13:15 left.  Osseo very effective in their euro ball screen offense with Page on the right wing and having Richard Mulbah ball screening for him.  So when Page wasn't scoring he was dishing to Mulbah for easy hoops.  Page finds Mulbah for a layup with 4:10 left and that keeps the Osseo lead at 5, 60-55.  Blaine within 4 with 2 minutes left.  But they miss a front end and Page makes his bonus freebies with 1:39 left.  Then Blaine gets a turnover after a bucket but misses the layup.  Osseo's free throws are no good but they put back the miss.  Blaine misses and Osseo misses another set of free throws.  But Osseo gets that back diving on the floor for the well used timeout with 54.3 left.  Osseo ball up 6 and they make 6-6 free throws to seal it.  Orioles win 75-66.

Post Game
For Blaine, Ray Mitchell with all 18 of his points in the 2nd half.  He sat the last 11:26 of the 1st half with 2 fouls.  Tony Strand with 13, Jason Kaul with 12 for the Bengals.  All but 6 of those in the 1st half as they carried the offense with Mitchell out.  Their read and react offense got them a couple of layups early in the game.  Defensively they showed a couple possessions of 1-3-1 but never went back to it during the 2nd half.  The Bengals fall to 11-7 in the NW Suburban North, 16-9 overall.  They'll be 2nd in the division and I see them as the solid 2 seed in 7AAAA regardless of what happens on Friday.  That means a likely 1st round rematch with Duluth East in the 2 vs 7 game.

For Osseo, they play a large chunk of the game without 2 or 3 of their starting seniors but still grind out a win.  Emmette Page another big night with 32 points to lead the Orioles.  Very necessary with Thiesen and Williams missing almost the entire game.  Richard Mulbah with 15 of his 17 in the 2nd half (many thanks to Page).  The right wing pick and roll with Page and Mulbah caused major damage.  No real run and jump success for Osseo as I expected some more pressure from them.  Osseo improves to 14-4 in the NW Suburban West and 19-6 overall.  They'll go for win number 20 at Elk River on Friday.  They appear to be locked into the 3 seed in 5AAAA.  That looks like a 1st round rematch with Centennial.