The Pack Rumbles on

A good late season non-conference matchup as neighbors St. Croix Lutheran and South St. Paul get together.  South St. Paul comes in at #4 and St. Croix Lutheran at #9 in this week class AAA poll.  A hot start for St. Croix Lutheran early as they hit their 1st 4 3s from 4 different players.  That helps them take a 20-9 lead midway thru the 1st half.  Owen Bushaw 2 and the hack to finish that run. 

SCL's top scoring threat Zach Longueville on the bench with 2 fouls after just 4 minutes.  So he doesn't see much of that lead.  South St. Paul finally revs up their high powered offense.  Devin Newsome coast to coast for a bucket.  Then he'll hit a straight away 3.  SSP star PG Alonzo Dodd dunks a turnover and the lead is gone.  Tied at 20. 

SSP keeps rolling Shawn West-Zimpel for 3.  Marquise Gleb goes over 1000 points for his career earlier in the night. He adds 2 buckets here and scores off a turnover.  Only 1 bucket for SCL until frosh Jaden Neish knocks down a halfcourt 3 to beat the halftime buzzer.  The Packers run is 25-3 after falling behind by 11.  They lead 34-26 at the half.

South St. Paul quickly opens that lead in the 2nd half to almost 20.  St. Croix Lutheran never seriously threatens again as the lead never gets back to single digits.  South St. Paul remains undefeated at 13-0 on the season.  St. Croix Lutheran falls to 9-5 but that includes 2 losses to DeLaSalle and 1 to Richfield (who they then beat in the follow up meeting).  St. Croix Lutheran visits St. Peter on Saturday.  South St. Paul has the big rematch with #9AAAA Tartan on Saturday afternoon.  SSP won the 1st meeting in overtime 70-69.

Interesting that SSP has started slow in all 3 games I've seen them play this season. Keeping them out of the paint is so hard.  But if you can keep them out of transition, that's a big part of the battle.  St. Croix Lutheran turnovers were a major factor in the 1st half run.  But when they didn't turn it over, they generally got good looks if they were patient.  That's a great strategy against a high-octane team like SSP to make them defend for a bit.  I would expect that this result would likely lock down the top 3 seeds in section 3AAA.  Hard to see SSP falling out of that 1 spot now.  That section always seems to seed really early as well.  So I'll guess that the SCL vs Columbia Heights game is after the seeding and possibly even the Columbia Heights vs Richfield game on the 10th.