Stillwater at Cretin-Derham Hall Observations

This Suburban East showdown is for the conference lead as Cretin-Derham Hall comes in 7-1 with their only loss at 8-0 Stillwater. Overall both teams come in with only 2 losses each. Good crowd on hand and would fill most buildings around except that CDH is really big. I'm surprised they can't find a way to use this building for section play (like the 4A and 4AA doubleheader finals that are annually held at Holy Angels) as its arguably the nicest high school facility I see during the season. I can actually under the CDH PA guy tonight which is a pleasant surprise. Normally it sounds like Chris Kattan's Saul character from Saturday Night Live.

Nice moments early in the game when Michael Floyd gets a steal and a breakaway dunk and then Joel Armstrong gets a bucket for both to reach the 1000 point plateau for their career. Armstrong is the 5th player in Stillwater history to accomplish that feat. Congrats to both players. Armstrong's bucket makes it 8-7 Stillwater with 13:39 to go in the half. Floyd is going nuts and he leads a 19-5 CDH run to give CDH a 26-13 lead with 6:30 to go in the half. A Seantrel Henderson bucket makes it 37-23 with 3:15 to go in the half. With 2 minutes left in the half, CDH has the ball and Stillwater goes 3-2 zone but CDH pulls the ball out for a minute and forces the Ponies to go back to their man defense. Its 39-27 at the half CDH leads. Floyd has 19 with 3 dunks, huge half. John Nance with 8 for CDH. Armstrong with 9 and Aaron Anderson with 7 for Stillwater. Gotta love the "Fe Fi Fo Fum" chant from the Stillwater students when Henderson was at the line. Interesting incident with the score too. At point the score was wrong on the scoreboard for about 2-3 minutes of game time as Stillwater had 3-4 extra points posted. Very strange. They got it corrected and then it happened briefly again in the 2nd half.

The start of the 2nd half is back and forth play before Armstrong gets 6 straight points to make it 47-40 with less than 13 minutes to play. After 4 straight Tom Hannon points pushes the lead back to 51-40, Anderson finishes a 6-0 run with 2 layups to make it 51-46 with 10:11 to play. John Nance is on the bench at this point for a lengthy period of time, don't know if he had 4 fouls or not, but I didn't think so (I thought 3). Henderson has 3 and he's sitting too. David Bettenburg and Connor Lynch are in for CDH during the Stillwater run and they haven't played all night. They're out there with Hannon, Binns and Floyd. Really curious lineup combination there by coach Kline. But they don't cave in, Floyd hits 2 straight 3s and Henderson somehow gets matched up with 6'1 soph Paul Franklin inside and gets an easy layup to make it 59-49 CDH inside 8 minutes. Andrew Walker gets 4 straight points in the last push for Stillwater to make it 61-55 inside of 6 minutes. Henderson has to go to the bench with his 4th foul. John Nance finally returns to the CDH lineup after a long period on the bench with 5:15 to go. He misses a 3, gets a tip that results in a Stillwater turnover and gets a pretty assist to start an 8-0 run that includes 4 Floyd points. That pushes the lead to 69-55 outside of 3 minutes to play. Aaron Anderson hits a couple late 3s and Joel Armstrong adds on a couple buckets late but that just keeps it respectable. CDH wins 81-69.

Aaron Anderson finishes with 20, Joel Armstrong with 21 for Stillwater but he was quiet after his initial 2nd half burst of 6 straightl. Floyd has a huge night with 34 for the Raiders. Nance, Henderson and Torres Tillman all finish with 10. This win gives CDH the lead in the race for the #1 seed in tough section 4AAAA, but there are still plenty of tough games left. Stillwater has trips to Forest Lake, Woodbury and Mounds View remaining. CDH has Woodbury and Mounds View at home before a trip to Forest Lake. Both teams are now 8-1 in league play with Mounds View 1 game back in the loss column. Mounds View has trips to Woodbury and CDH remaining before they host Stillwater and Forest Lake.