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Oshkosh North squeezes Brookfield East to win first Division 1 championship

03/18/2018, 12:45am CDT
By Dick Knapinski

Oshkosh North coach Brad Weber has said all season that all he wanted from his team was to become a better version of itself each day. On Saturday night, the final version – and its vaunted 1-3-1 defense – were pretty darn good.

The Spartans (27-1), the top-ranked Division 1 team in the state for much of the season, put the clamps on their fellow Spartans from Brookfield East to grab a 61-44 win at the Kohl Center and win their first WIAA state championship.

“We’ve always said to embrace the process, not the product,” said Weber, a longtime Oshkosh North assistant in his first year succeeding legendary coach Frank Schade. “The product is pretty sweet right now, though.”

The length and athleticism of North’s 1-3-1 zone kept Brookfield East (25-3) to 38 percent shooting, including just 29 percent (6-of-21) on three-pointers. North also scored six straight points midway through the second half to expand a five-point lead to 11, and never led by less than eight the rest of the way.

Tyrese Haliburton, North’s Iowa State-bound senior, led his team with 30 points including 23 in the second half. He held himself responsible for reaching a goal he said began when he and his fellow North seniors were in third grade, watching the 2009 North team reach the state semifinals.

“I feel like I’m the leader of this team and guys feed off of me,” Haliburton said. “In the first half, I was swearing my emotions too much and couldn’t make a shot. (Sam McGath) is a good defender and he was tough in the first half, but in the second half I got going.”

A three-pointer at the halftime buzzer helped Haliburton spark his game and give North a 26-20 lead at the break. He made all 16 of his second-half free throw attempts and finished with 30 points overall. Haliburton was 18-of-18 overall from the line, leading a 23-of-28 free throw performance by North.

“I couldn’t understand why they kept fouling me, because I knew they were going in,” he said when asked why he was smiling late in the game as he kept going to the line.

At the same time, North’s defense caused problems for Brookfield East’s offense, especially when its inside-out game created shot attempts that weren’t going down. East shot slightly better than 38 percent in each half, but could only hit two of nine three-point tries in the second half.

After East’s thrilling win over Sun Prairie in Friday’s semifinals, its offense could never find a groove on Saturday.

“We were able to stay away from turnovers for the most part, which is what we really wanted to do,” Brookfield East coach Joe Rux said. “Our shots just didn’t go. When the shots don’t go, they’re able to pack it in pretty tight.”

East center Patrick Cartier, the hero of Friday’s semifinal win, managed 15 points to lead his team but could only collect four rebounds as North crashed the boards effectively and tweaked the 1-3-1 to slow his solid post footwork.

“With that 1-3-1, they packed it in and were doubling me a lot,” he said. “I tried to kick it out but they were playing pretty good defense.”

For Oshkosh North, its first state title comes in its sixth appearance in Madison. Brookfield East, meanwhile, was making its first championship game appearance in four state trips, but its first since 1979.

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