Back to where college hoops began

Prologue
Its night 2 at the Hutton Holiday Classic.  Always fun to be at Hutton Arena at Hamline and good to see holiday hoops back there.  Only 1 game instead the planned 2 but an interesting game it is.  Bloomington Jefferson taking on Milwaukee Carmen NW.   Carmen NW picked to win the small schools division of the Milwaukee City Conference.  Soph Dupree Fletcher leads a very young Carmen squad to take on Daniel Freitag and the Jags.  35 second shot clock in use tonight but the refs didn't know that so we have some immediate confusion.  Was also confusing to see it reset to 20 on an offensive rebound.  That's one of those minor details that I'm sure will be fun once we start using it for the 2023-24 season.  My holiday gift to everyone is that I'll spare you a bunch of bad Where in the World is Carmen San Diego jokes and pick something more sophisticated for tonight's music.

Song of the Day: Carmen (the opera) - Georges Bizet

Game Time
Daniel Freitag gets off to a nice start for Jefferson.  He has a stretch of 8 straight Jags points as Jefferson takes a 13-7 lead.  Blake Mamalakis with a triple and another Freitag hoop to stretch the lead to 22-9. That's right after Dupree Fletcher picks up his 3rd foul of the half.  Jags go the break up 31-20.

Fletcher wastes no time getting his game going in the 2nd half.  He puts back a miss, makes 2 free throws and buries a straight away 3.  He'll add a 3 point play for good measure as Carmen pulls to within 43-42.  Freitag with a 3 to stop that momentum.  Then Hayden Holland with 9 straight Jags points including a pair of his own triples to push the lead back to double figures.

Jefferson appears ready to close it out but they turn it over 3 straight times.  The last one converted into a bucket.  Then its Fletcher with a kickout assist for a 3 and we're tied at 62 with 1:59 to play.  Out of a Jags timeout its Holland with a clutch triple for the lead.  Fletcher counters with a bucket.  Fletcher with a 3, Jags timeout with 13 seconds left up 3.  Fletcher then steals in the inbounds and gets a timeout with 10.9 left.  Carmen has a chance to tie but their 3 is no good.  Clock confusion as it doesn't start right away but it won't matter.  Freitag seals it with 2 free throws.  That's 8 of 8 free tosses for Jefferson in the last 1:09.  Jefferson wins 75-70.

Post Game
Bloomington Jefferson has now won 4 in a row after we did their season opening tight loss to Rosemount.  That 4-1 record includes solid wins at Farmington and Duluth East along with this one.  Daniel Freitag with 25 points and 9 rebounds (give or take on the rebounds) to lead the Jags.  Blake Mamalakis with 5 triples in a breakout game comes up big with 19 points. Hayden Holland finishes with 22 points, 18 of them in a terrific second half.  3 triples in there including the tiebreaker with 1:42 left.  It was fun to see them run their White Set against Carmen's 1-3-1 a few times.  Carmen got out of the 1-3-1 with about 8 minutes to go after having some 2nd half success with it.  Surprised me that they never came back to it, especially with the shot clock in use.  Jefferson is off until the new year when they open Metro West play at Waconia.  Dupree Fletcher with 21 of his 23 in the second half to lead Carmen NW.  They are now 4-3 on the season which includes yesterday's win over Fridley.

Czar Insights
For details on exactly what the value in the chart mean, click here for the full explanation of Czar Insights.   Jefferson 10-22 from the 3 point line was the major difference here.