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Germantown coach Steve Showalter had some very specific goals he wanted the Warhawks to accomplish in order to win their second straight Division 1 championship on Saturday.

His team accomplished few of them, but they didn’t have to be perfect to remain perfect.

“We wanted to win the rebound battle but I don’t know if we did,” Showalter said after the Warhawks beat Mukwonago 57-28 at the Kohl Center to finish unbeaten for the second straight year.

“We wanted to keep Luke (Fischer) on the floor the whole game and we didn’t do that. We wanted Lamonte (Bearden) to a really, really good game from the field and he was 1 for 11. We wanted Jake (Showalter) to light it up from outside. He was 1 for 5.

“I don’t know what happened.”

What Germantown (28-0) did was survive a physical battle with the Indians, holding them to 21 percent shooting and 10 second-half points.

“Defense, which we don’t practice very much, really came through for us,” Steve Showalter said.

Unlikely heroes

With Jon Averkamp and Evan Wesenberg in early foul trouble, Showalter turned to juniors Dearionte Hudson and Brian Bearden to shore up the defense. That pair had only combined for 17 minutes in Friday’s semifinal win against Oshkosh North.

“I was grasping,” Showalter said. “We took a guess that maybe our smalls could match up better against their bigs.”

Hudson and Bearden came through in their combined 29 minutes, supplying 17 points, nine rebounds and five steals.

A very cold feeling

Mukwonago (23-5) held its own against the Warhawks early, staying within five points late in the second quarter despite shooting just 27 percent (6 of 22) before halftime. After the intermission, however, the bottom fell out for the Indians, as they made only 3 of 21 shots from the field and only 4 of 12 free throws.

“I thought initially the game was flowing well for us,” Mukwonago coach Jim Haasser said. “But the game of basketball is about putting the round ball through the rim. If we’d done that a few more times, what that might have done for the rest of the game might have been intriguing.”

Dominic Cizauskas led the Indians with just nine points.

“We just kept missing shot after shot, and the guys would be crashing the boards but their guys were in the right position at the right time and the ball kept landing in their hands,” he said. “I mean, we shot awful. It was pretty bad. We were like, ‘Come on, hit something.’”

Think good thoughts…

Haasser admitted that he told forward Nate Tanguay to smile after the senior hit a 3-pointer to finish the first quarter and pull Mukwonago to within 15-7.

“It wasn’t going our way in the first quarter, but to finish by hitting a big momentum shot like that, let’s carry that and turn that around,” Haasser said. “That’s all that was.”

The streak continues

Germantown has now won 56 games in a row, just a half-dozen victories short of Dominican’s state boys record of 62 games set in 1978-80. The Warhawks have not lost since the sectional final against Appleton East – what Showalter called the “Super Tuesday debacle” – in March 2011.

“That means we’re 80-2 over three years,” Showalter said. “I don’t know if I want to lose again.”

Germantown also became the first team to go undefeated and win state titles since Cassville’s Division 4 titles in 1994 and 1995. No unbeaten team had ever won consecutive titles in Division 1 play or the WIAA single-class tournament previously.

“This means everything right now,” Fischer said. “There’s no better way to end my senior year than with another gold ball and not losing a game in two years.”

All-Tournament Team

The All-Tournament Team as voted on media covering the event consisted of:

Luke Fischer, Germantown (MVP)
Duane Wilson, Dominican
Diamond Stone, Dominican
Bronson Koenig, Aquinas
Austin Hawkins, Auburndale
Cody Wichmann, Pulaski
Matt Thomas, Onalaska
Aaron Retzlaff, Randolph
Dominic Cizauskas, Mukwonago
Jake Showalter, Germantown