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

By Dick Knapinski
For wissports.net

Brillion grabs a grinder

Brillion coach Pete Kittel accepted the description of the Lions’ 40-35 Division 3 championship win over Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau as “a grinder” as charitable.

“To me it was kind of ugly,” he said.

It was probably the prettiest kind of ugly for the Lions, though. Brillion held the Red Hawks to 23.5 percent shooting while tying the Division 3 record for the lowest score by a championship game-winning team (La Crosse Aquinas last year).

“I thought our kids did a great job defending, but it isn’t always pretty,” Kittel said. “Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau’s defense was just as good. You know, it doesn’t look as intense as our man-to-man but they were long and they took away a lot of things we tried to do.”

G-E-T coach Mark Wagner found his team scoring only half of its season average and hitting only five or its 23 3-point tries.

“We knew going in that if the game was played physical, it would be a struggle,” he said. “That’s not how our kids play and their physicalness really gave us problems.”

Prime-time performance

Brillion senior guard Trevor Krizenesky led the Lions with only 10 points – right on his season average – but eight of them came in a 90-second spurt after the Red Hawks had closed to 25-23 with less than seven minutes remaining.

Krizenesky hit two 3-pointers and followed it with a runner in the lane to put Brillion back up by 10 with 5:14 left.

“That’s typical Trevor,” Kittel said. “You might remember prior to that he had a couple of plays that he probably won’t want to talk about very long. But he’s a great competitor. You talk about a guy stepping up. You had to make a play there and he did that.”

Hands-off approach

G-E-T standout Riley Bambenek picked up his third foul early in the second quarter but Wagner left leading scorer in the game to play the top on the Red Hawks’ 1-3-1.

“We just didn’t feel like we could make a run without Riley,” Wagner said. “We felt like we had to roll the dice.”

That was a smart move: Bambenek did not pick up another foul during the rest of the game despite playing 30 of 32 minutes. He finished with a team-high 15 points and 9 rebounds

“Rebounding you didn’t want to go over the back but you had to keep playing,” he said. “You just had to be a little smarter but I kept playing as hard as I could.”

Go back to that

Brillion opened the second half in a similar way as it opened the second quarter in Friday’s semifinal win – with an alley-oop pass over the defense to forward Ryan Reinke. This time, Reinke settled for a layup instead of a dunk, but it opened a seven-point lead.

“We put that in yesterday,” Kittel said. “Ron Prochnow, our assistant coach, was watching tape and said we could took take advantage of that diagonal if we do it real quick.”

Unable to pause

Brillion’s defense caused G-E-T to take two timeouts to prevent five-second closely guarded violations, something that came back to haunt the Red Hawks in the final minute when they were out of timeouts.

“One of those two I shouldn’t have taken,” he said. “There was someone breaking open right when I called it. It was one of those games where every possession mattered and you didn’t want to give up a possession. I wish we would have one more (timeout) at the end.”

Kittel realized the situation as well, especially with a five-point lead with five seconds left.

“I told our guys if they score, just grab the ball and stand out of bounds, because they couldn’t stop it,” he said.

Legacy building

Kittel answered with a rapid “no” when asked if he thought about joining Fall Creek’s Ron Schultz as the only coach to lead a school to a WIAA football championship and a boys’ basketball title. Kittel’s Brillion football teams won state championships in 2003, 2004 and 2010.

As expected, he deflected the discussion to those around him.

“I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,” Kittel said. “I don’t know why I’m so lucky. My coaches believe in the same things I do, in teaching character and doing things the right way.”

He did add, however, that the pregame at state left him without much to do, since at Brillion he also serves as the school’s athletic director.

“At home, I have to greet the officials and worry about who’s selling tickets,” he said. “Here, my assistants have handled everything so I was kind of wandering around before the game.”