A Brute Force Interior Attack

Prologue
Its a section 2AAAA matchup as #5AAAA Chaska starts a non-conference stretch of their schedule by hosting Minnetonka.  KB and the Sunshine Band on the whistles.  The always entertaining Ryan Paul joined by Eric Kraushar on the WatchCHBN broadcast.  Quality work as always and correctly busting my chops for missing a ref correcting a 2 to a 3 (something I was able to confirm at the half).

Game Time
The Chaska defense forcing Minnetonka into long possessions.  Tonka takes a 12-11 at 9:22 thanks to a Jalen Cain 3 point play.  Brady Nicholson takes in the inside out feed for a Chaska triple.  Frosh PG Andy Stefonowicz counters with a 3 point play as he double clutches a jumper and takes the bump.  18-17 Chaska at 6:48.  Nicholson on the line with the late ref correction as mentioned as Chaska pushes the lead to 24-17.  Spencer Goetz with a nice cut to the rack for 2 and then puts back his own miss to beat the halftime buzzer.  32-25 Chaska at the break.  21 of the 32 from Nicholson and Goetz.

Nicholson too big and strong inside.  He takes over to start the 2nd half. He scores 4 of the 1st 5 buckets of the half.  10-0 Chaska run blows the game open.  42-25 Hawks just over 3 minutes into the half.  Nicholson and Goetz combine for the 1st 11 Chaska FGs of the half.  Nicholson tacking on a pair 3s as he scores the last 3 buckets of that stretch.  56-34 Chaska with 9 minutes left after all of that. Chaska coasts from there to a 73-47 win.

Post Game
Minnetonka falls to 4-9 on the season.  They'll finish Lake Conference play this week at Edina and St. Michael.  Really tough to find offense.  Vlad Ciubotaru tops the list with 10 points.  Andy Stefoniwicz with 9, Jalen Cain with 8.  Ultimately though nothing they could do on the inside defensively.

#5AAAA Chaska improves to 11-2.  The 2 bigs go absolutely wild.  Brady Nicholson with a career high 29.  20 of those in the 2nd half as he did whatever he wanted inside.  Could have put up 35 since he missed some interior looks in the 1st half.  He even added 3 triples to boot.  Spencer Goetz adds 20 as he also worked in the paint.  Luke Strazzanti adds 9.  They finish up Metro West play against Bloomington Jefferson on Tuesday.  Then 4 non-conference games to end the regular season.  That includes 3 more against the Lake conference (at Eden Prairie, Edina and #2AAAA Wayzata).  Then they end the year at #1AAA Minnehaha.  That strength of schedule will help them in the battle for the top seed in 2AAAA with #6AAAA Shakopee.

Four Factors

FACTOR	Chaska	Minnetonka
Effective FG %	64.3%	41.4%
Offensive Rebound %	17.9%	24.3%
Free Throw Rate	10.7%	15.4%
Turnover %	10.2%	15.5%
Points Per Possession	1.24	0.81

Chaska shoots 25 of 35 in the paint compared to 11 of 24 for Tonka.  All the other numbers very low and of no consequence.  Chaska won't be happy with 1-6 FTs.  Outside of the Nicholson 3s, they were 2-11 on corner 3s.  Won't see that from them much with guys like Jack Frick and Luke Strazzanti.