As the 641st game of Skip Dolan’s head coaching career came to an end, an end that was unlike any other, the Annandale head coach tried to find his wife Cathy in the stands at Williams Arena. He was unable to locate her, but that’s about the only miss the Cardinals had Saturday.
Dolan has been coaching
Annandale for 26 years and the Cardinals’ 60-49 win over Minneapolis North in Saturday’s
Class 2A state championship game was the first boys basketball title for the
school. Annandale had made seven previous appearances at the state tournament;
the best finish was second place in 2014.
“I looked
all over at the end for my wife because as much I love my assistant coaches,
she's my best assistant coach,” said Dolan, whose career record is 427-214. “She's
been with me from day one, she knows this is who I am and she knows that I love
doing this.”
The
Cardinals finished with a record of 31-2, with the losses coming to Maple River
on Dec. 11 and Albany on Dec. 16. They went 29-0 after that, defeating Maple
Lake in the opening round of the Section 6 playoffs and Albany in the section title
game.
The Cardinals’ five starters
are all seniors and three-sport athletes, and their “slow” start to the season can
be attributed to a lengthy football season that ended with a loss to
Plainview-Elgin-Millville in the state semifinals at U.S. Bank Stadium on Nov.
20, two days before basketball practice began.
Time was needed for
some injuries to heal, and the Cardinals finally got cranked up in late
December. A three-point win over St. Cloud Tech on Dec. 30 was the turning point,
according to Dolan.
“Once we
beat them, I said, ‘You know what? There's going to have to be an awfully good 2A
school to beat us.’ ”
That didn’t
happen, and now the Cardinals have made history.
“It’s completely
unbelievable I think we've all dreamed about this along with every other kid in
the country who dreams about doing this,” said senior Hawkin Miller, who scored
a game-high 18 points. “And to have the opportunity and the people around you
in the community and the coaches around you, to be able to get it done. I think
we all feel extremely blessed and lucky to be able to do this. It was a blast. I
couldn't ask for anything more.”
Dolan talked about how much work went into the
historic championship run.
“You can’t understand how much time
these guys put in. They’re three-sport athletes, they’ve all been in the weight
room consistently, they’ve all have been in the gym at 6:30 in the morning and
late and stuff like that. There's not one part about this that they didn't earn.”
Dolan, a
grandfather of eight, was asked how the family will celebrate.
“We're
pretty reserved as far as families go, so we'll just celebrate it as a family,”
he said with a smile. “But don't think for one minute we are not cherishing
this.”
--Annandale
shot 56.4 percent for the game and 58.3 percent in the first half, which ended
with the Cardinals leading 30-23. North struggled with its accuracy, hitting 37
percent of its shots in the final 18 minutes and 42 percent overall.
“You look at
the stats, and we can't win if we don't put the ball in the basket,” said North
coach Larry McKenzie, who is in his 26th year as a head coach. “And they
shot the ball a lot better than we did. I think the one thing that we did not
do today was we just didn't control the tempo. We played their style of
basketball and obviously they were better at that than we were.”
Minneapolis North’s
schedule was filled with quality opponents this season, including the teams who
met Saturday night for the Class 4A state title. They lost a 12-point game to
Park Center and lost by two to Wayzata, as well as defeating 3A finalist DeLaSalle.
They also beat state tournament qualifiers Moorhead (4A) and Minnehaha Academy
(2A).
McKenzie won four consecutive
state titles at Minneapolis Patrick Henry from 2000 to 2003 and led North to
championships in 2016 and 2017. North also won state crowns in 1980, 1995,
1996, 1997 and 2003.
Can Hayfield
Go Back-To-Back-To-Back?
It’s a little bit amazing
to think that in last season’s Section 1 playoffs, Hayfield was seeded third.
All they did was win the 2021 Class 1A state championship and they did it again
Saturday with a 51-49 victory over Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa. And here’s something
else to chew on: The Vikings will return three starters next season.
Winning back-to-back championships
is rare, and the Hayfield players said it was not easy to compare the two.
“It's
exciting, an unreal feeling both times,” said junior Isaac Matti, who had a
game-high 27 points Saturday. “But this year it was a little bit of an
expectation almost. Whereas last year was the first time for a lot of us, this
was more of an expectation.”
Senior Kobe
Foster called the 2022 title “a sigh of relief kind of, because we had a target
on our back all year.”
--Half of
the Hayfield basketball players also play baseball, and that team was scheduled
to be on a 2 a.m. Sunday flight to Florida to relax in the sun and work out. Vikings
senior Easton Fritcher, who will play baseball at the University of Minnesota
as the first Division I baseball player to come
from Hayfield, said, “It’s
going to be tough. I need some sleep.”
--After
Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa defeated New Life Academy in Friday’s semifinals, coach
Chris Anderson was asked about the challenge of facing the defending state
champions in the title game. His answer spoke volumes.
“Obviously they've been in this situation, they've been in the state title game,” he said about Hayfield. “But I'll take what we have. I'll take these guys and I'll take them any day of the week. They have a lot of heart and passion.”
Honoring Officials And Students
--Recipients
of the MSHSL Officials Distinguished Service Awards were honored at halftime of
the Class 1A championship game. The honorees were Mike Amidon, St. Paul; David
Anderson, Rochester; Tony Bartovich, Eveleth; Bill Benson, Maple Grove; Greg
Rathbun, Byron; Jennifer Smith, Woodbury; and George Winn, Maple Grove. The Range
Coaches & Officials Association was named an Association of Excellence.
--Triple-A
Award winners from around the state were honored at halftime of the Class 2A
championship game. The MSHSL Academics, Arts and Athletics Award honors seniors
who have a 3.0 or higher grade-point average and participate in
League-sponsored athletic and fine arts activities. The list of winners
can be found here: https://www.mshsl.org/about/news/awards/2022-triple-award-finalists
--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of
Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn
and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts.
Contact John at jmillea@mshsl.org
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