Wisconsin High School Sports | Wisconsin Sports Network | WisSports.net

WSN Basketball Playoff Coverage presented by the Buckle Up Phone Down Pledge

Join the Buckle Up Phone Down movement! WisDOT challenges Wisconsin to put safety first by taking the two most important actions to prevent or survive a crash. Accept the Buckle Up Phone Down challenge. Use your seat belt every trip and put down the phone when driving. Take the Buckle Up Phone Down pledge!

The overall athleticism of the Pirates (27-2) never let the Lakers get within six points over the final 25 minutes of the game after a fast start propelled C-FC to an early lead.

“We definitely started with that deer in the headlights look early,” said Turtle Lake coach Angela Wagner, who became the first woman to lead a boys’ basketball team to the WIAA state tournament. “That was an issue we had early on in the season, trying to get us to slow down. It looked like we got a little scared and we got back into our bad habits.”

The Pirates, who are making their first state tourney appearance since 2014 and only their second overall, jumped to a 10-point lead by the 11:35 mark of the first half and never let the Lakers within six for the rest of the game. Much of that lead was built on an uptempo pace on both ends, especially on defense.

For the game, C-FC outscored Turtle Lake 29-7 off turnovers (the Lakers had 22 on Friday), as well as a 17-2 advantage on fast-break points.

“While we’ve run some zone just to change things up, mostly we’ve been man-to-man where everybody’s switching,” Cochrane-Fountain City coach Jesse Cyrus said. “Sometimes we’ll have something where we’ll have one guy stick on somebody, but mostly we’re just switching. And that takes a lot of communication.”

The Lakers’ biggest weapon was also its largest player, 6-foot-6 junior Brandon Wagner, the coach’s son. He was dominant both inside and out, finishing with 27 points and 14 rebounds, including four three-pointers to supply half of his team’s total. Those threes were important, as the rest of the team managed to hit only four of 15 three-point attempts.

“They were trying to get two guys on me every time I was in the post,” Brandon Wagner said of the Pirates. “Then on the arc, they always made sure that they were really close all the time.”

Turtle Lake closed to within six points twice in the second half, the last time at 58-52 with 5:08 remaining. But C-FC countered with four quick points and the Lakers never seriously threatened after that.

Cameron Lipinski countered that outburst for the Pirates, as he finished with 24 points, six rebounds, and five steals, along with a couple of breakaway dunks off turnovers.

“We set the tone an kept the intensity up which fueled us even more,” Lipinski said. “Making a dunk like that keeps the intensity up and builds it even more.”

Porter Ehrat added 12 points and Reed Schmidtknecht 10 for the Pirates.

Turtle Lake also got 10 points each from Brody Tarman and Camden Davis.

The Crusaders (25-4) saw their lead wither to 20-19 with 6:17 left in the first half but then went on an 11-0 run that helped them to a 36-23 halftime lead and a runaway win over the Challengers (23-7), last year’s Division 5 runnerup.

“I think there was a media timeout right before that and we talked about that now is the time to show it,” Sheboygan Lutheran coach Nick Verhagen said. “In these situations, at least from my vantage point, it takes a little bit to get these guys going. They understand it’s just another basketball game but it’s a different environment. Once we got over that and got some momentum on our side, we knew we had a little bit of confidence going.”

The display was impressive to Abundant Life coach Mike Thies, who saw his team shoot just 34 percent from the field – 10 percentage points below its season-long average – including just two-of-20 on three-pointers.

“That’s a super talented team with a lot of good players,” Thies said of the Crusaders. “They’ve got good chemistry and play well together. They can drive, they have bigs and shooters. Hats off to Sheboygan Lutheran.”

The Challengers especially had few answers for 6-4 sophomore Marion Boyland, who had 23 points on 10-of-14 shooting along with nine rebounds. His performance also led Sheboygan Lutheran to a 52-34 point advantage in the paint and a 41-26 gap in rebounding.

“Every practice, we do ‘bigs on guards’ and Coach is always hard me,” Boyland said. “He believes in me a lot so it’s good to have someone there for me to have fun with me but also be hard on me at the same time.”

Abundant Life closed to nine points (36-27) early in the second half, but the Crusaders used a 10-2 run to push the margin to 48-29 with 12:39 left. After that, the Challengers got no closer than 14 points.

Along with Boyland’s 23 points, Sheboygan Lutheran added 18 points and nine rebounds by Zach Leonhard and 16 points and six boards from Oliver Leibham. Abundant Life was paced by 17 points from Jonah Koon and 10 by his twin brother, Jacob.

Although the Challengers’ second straight state trip finished early, Thies remarked of the joy that the team’s postseason run brought back to the school, which was rocked by a fatal shooting in December.

“Every guy on this team and every person in our stands has their own story with what they’ve been through this year,” he said. “To know that our basketball team gave them some joy and some happiness; something to come around and get excited about, something to be happy about … We talk about it a lot. It’s more than basketball. We’ve played for a much higher purpose.”