Cardinal girls ready for Willmar, McCoy, Peper make state
The Cardinal girls' basketball team will play their biggest game of the season to this point when it travels to Willmar tomorrow to take on one of its biggest rivals in the Central Lakes Conference.
Alexandria lost by two to Willmar at Jefferson High School on January 5. Willmar then slipped up against Brainerd a week later to make things interesting atop the CLC. Both teams come into this game with 11-1 records.
The Cardinals know what they need to do to be successful tomorrow night. Alexandria is at its best when it can create turnovers and get up and down the court. Willmar, on the other hand, has a front line that features three girls who are 6'0" or taller down low.
Whichever team can establish its preferred style of play should have the advantage. Alexandria has been able to create a high number of turnovers all season. The Cardinals will need to do that again tomorrow night.
"That's really important," senior guard Angela Christianson said. "And that's what we're good at, too. We're good at the fast break. So that's a key thing that we can do and have an advantage over them. They can't keep up with us, so I think that's the main thing we'll do. Keep pushing it and do what we do."
I talked to both Christianson and fellow senior guard Gracie Bruzek after their win over Sauk Rapids-Rice this past Monday night. Both of them seemed excited about the opportunity that awaits against Willmar.
They know the Central Lakes Conference title will likely come down to Friday night. Whichever team wins will control its own destiny the rest of the way against CLC opponents that they will be expected to beat. Check out the Friday Sports section of the Echo Press to see what Christianson and Bruzek had to say about the match-up.
- The Alexandria Nordic ski will have two skiers represent the Cardinals at the state tournament later this month.
Seniors Sarah Peper and Austin McCoy both qualified for the meet with their performances at the Section 8 meet yesterday. McCoy finished 10th overall with a total time of 34:09, while Peper finished 11th for the girls with a time of 38:49.
Both skiers are captains who have put in a lot of time and effort to get to this point. They both improved their times this season after the Cardinals failed to send anyone to state a season ago.
The two Cardinals skiers will battle the best in Minnesota on February 11 at Giants Ridge in Biwabik.
Posted by: Eric Morken on 2/04/2010 at 9:25 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Brandon-Evansville girls look to avenge ugly loss to Panthers
The rematch of the Brandon-Evansville versus Parkers Prairie girls' basketball game is on the docket for Thursday night.
And for the Chargers, it could not come at a better time. Brandon-Evansville head coach Dick Simpson told me today that he had not even talked to his players about the game until after they beat Park Christian 61-38 on Tuesday night.
Still, I'm sure his players have thought about this one since the first time these two teams met on December 11. The Chargers were shocked that night when they got beat 75-37 by a much improved Panthers' team from a year ago. Both teams were ranked in the top 10 at that time.
It's just the Panthers who come in state ranked this time around. Parkers Prairie had the No. 1 spot in the polls before a loss to Battle Lake on January 15 knocked them back down to No. 3. Simpson knows how good the Panthers are. He also knows that anything can happen on any given night.
"[The girls] know its coming up," he said. "We've won five in a row, and I think we are playing better. It's a matter of confidence. I would be surprised if we got beat by 38 again. We are better than that."
The Panthers slipped up against Battle Lake, opening some things up in the Little Eight Conference. Parkers Prairie is still in control, but the Chargers, Battlers and Underwood sit just one game back with 4-2 records.
The Panthers have a chance to put some more distance between them and the rest of the pack in the conference. On the same token, the Chargers know they can climb even if they can upset Parkers in Evansville.
That won't be easy. The Panthers are a totally different team from a season ago. The main difference seems to be the confidence in which they are shooting the ball this year. I was at the Panthers' blowout win over Rothsay last Thursday and no one on this teams is afraid to take an open shot.
For the most part, those shots have been falling all season. That is what killed Brandon-Evansville the first time these two teams met. If the Panthers are hitting outside shots, they are almost unbeatable.
Simpson doesn't plan to double Sari Noga. He knows how well the players around her have performed this season. He is willing to let Noga score her 30 points if it means holding down the rest of her teammates.
"We have never doubled Noga," Simpson said. "We can't stop her with one and we haven't stopped her with two. She is still going to get [her points]. We have pretty much played her straight up. We played them man-to-man the first time. I think we did OK. They just shot great. I just hope they miss a few outside and start thinking about it again. They have a lot of people who can shoot. It's not just the Dorns (Jazmyn, Madison and Kaylee) and the Nogas (Sari and Micaela). Kendra Klimek can hit shots. Krista Alberts hit a few against us last time.
"I think we will just go play our regular stuff. They have got enough to go along with Sari, and she's a good player. We have survived 38 from her before, I think. I don't mind that as long as it's just one."
Panthers head coach John Noga knows a win tomorrow in Evansville probably won't come as easy as it did in Parkers Prairie. I talked to him last Tuesday night a few days after his team lost to Battle Lake and he said he thought that game would serve as a wake-up call for his team.
He knows Brandon-Evansville will be ready to play coming into this one. He also feels his players understand now that they are the ones that everyone is gunning for in the LEC. They need to bring there best every night. He seemed confidence that they would do that from now on.
It does not seem likely that either team will come into this one with a lack of energy. The rivalry between these two teams is as good as it gets in the LEC. Another packed house will likely add to the atmosphere as they face off for another game with LEC title implications.
Posted by: Eric Morken on 1/27/2010 at 2:29 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Panther girls learn a lesson in unexpected loss
Parkers Prairie girls' basketball coach John Noga did not seem too concerned about his team after a surprising loss to Battle Lake last Friday night.
The Panthers were cruising through their competition on their way to an 11-0 record before the Battlers slowed them down and held them to 53 points in a one-point loss. Parkers Prairie had scored 93, 81 and 95 points, respectively, in the previous three games.
The loss came in the Panthers' first game after they moved up to No. 1 in the latest Class A Minnesota Basketball News poll. Noga didn't think the excitement of that No. 1 ranking affected the way his girls came out and played against the Battlers last Friday night.
"I don't think it really had a lot to do with it," he said. "Maybe more on [Battle Lake's] side than ours. The place was packed. Dave [Marso] is a good coach and he had them ready to play. It was just one of those nights, and I didn't really think it would ever happen to us, but everyone shot bad. It happens.
"The girls were disappointed, but like I said, I would rather have this happen now than in the last week of the season. Now we can adjust. It was almost to the point where things were too easy for us. Most of the games we were playing have been over at halftime. So it was also good to be in a tough game where we had to work hard."
Consider it a lesson learned for the Panthers. Up until that point, it was looking like they couldn't lose. They were beating teams by almost 40 points a game and that included good teams in the Little Eight Conference like Brandon-Evansville and Underwood.
Parkers Prairie has become the targeted team in the league this year. They are going to get every team's best effort. If they didn't know that before, they do now.
"Everybody's going to play us hard," Noga said. "Every gym we go to is pretty much packed. The kids in this league, the are just competitive kids. You give a kid a challenge, which Battle Lake had there, and I thought they played up a notch.
"Pretty much everywhere we go, people pack the gyms. Even at the Walker tournament, there were just a lot of people curious about our team. It's cool. The girls like it. And overall, I don't see anybody not handling the pressure part of it. They are all really levelheaded."
Noga said it was obvious what his team didn't do in the loss compared to what they were doing in the games leading up to it.
"We are always looking to push the ball and that night, for some reason, we didn't," he said. "We need to figure out why we weren't doing that. Defensively, we weren't putting the kind of pressure on the ball that we normally do. So to me, it was just a good wake-up call, a good learning experience for them."
The Panthers shot just 27 percent against Battle Lake. Sari Noga was also held to just one point in the opening half before scoring 16 in the second. Those things don't happen a lot.
Noga said it was not entirely discouraging, though. The Panthers are a strong shooting team this season with four players that have been a consistent threat to hit from the outside and take it to the basket. Good shooters often just have to shoot themselves out of slumps. Noga liked the fact that his team was still being aggressive taking the ball to the basket and showing no hesitation on open jumpers.
"Hopefully it doesn't happen again (the off shooting night)" he said. "We didn't shoot the ball well, but I still didn't see anybody hesitating to shoot the ball. Sometimes you get in situations where I've had other kids in the past that if they aren't making shots, they will just shut down and pass the ball off. We didn't do that. That was a good thing."
It is cliche to say, but it's possible this loss was a good thing for Parkers Prairie. No coach likes to lose but even Noga said that he is kind of glad that his team will no longer have to have the pressure of going undefeated and having that on their minds if they would have made it all the way to the tournament without a loss.
He pointed to the Battle Lake team of two years ago as an example. The Battlers went into the 2008 tournament with a 23-0 record. They won their first playoff game before being upset by Ashby in the second round of Section 6A play. They had beaten the Arrows by a combined 33 points in two games during the regular season.
Up until last Friday, the Panthers had looked like a team that couldn't be beat. But sports are great because any team can fall on any given night. Now the Panthers have experienced it. And Noga feels it will serve them well down the stretch.
"The girls realize what happened last week," he said. "And I think they know that next week when we play Brandon-Evansville, it's going to be a tough game. They're going to play us tough and everyone else is going to the second time around, as well.
"Sari said to the team, 'do you remember how you felt when we lost? Do you remember how you felt that entire weekend?' And everybody pretty much said they felt sick. And she just said, 'next game, remember that before we step on the floor.' I think if we do that, we'll be fine."
Posted by: Eric Morken on 1/21/2010 at 12:56 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Lesnar gains "different take on life" after career threatening illness
Brock Lesnar made it very clear that the illness that forced him to cancel his fight with Shane Carwin at UFC 106 was every bit as serious as originally thought when he and UFC president Dana White joined Josh Elliot on Wednesday's 10 a.m. Sportscenter.
Lesnar talked for the first time about his illness and made it clear that he feared his career was maybe over after doctors in Bismarck diagnosed him with Diverticulitis. The rare disease is caused by swelling of the diverticulum, pouches that are normally found in the large intestine.
The sickness kept Lesnar at Medcenter One in Bismarck, North Dakota for 11 days. He lost 40 pounds in the hospital, while having to be fed intravenously. Antibiotics helped heal him to the point that doctors did not feel emergency surgery to remove his colon was necessary.
He was not out of the woods yet, though. After leaving Bismarck, Lesnar went to the Mayo Clinic to receive a second opinion. Doctors at both hospitals determined that surgery to remove part of his colon would eventually be required once the swelling went down.
Lesnar had no idea how long he would be out of the octagon had the surgery taken place. Luckily for him, it didn't. He gained almost 30 pounds back since his 11-day stay at Medcenter One and on January 5, doctors were amazed to see that his body had healed itself to the point that surgery would not be required.
Lesnar said doctors were dumbfounded that this happened. For fans of Lesnar, the news is the best of a bad situation. White said that Lesnar will fight again this summer, likely against the winner of the Frank Mir vs. Shane Carwin match on March 27 in Newark, New Jersey.
Lesnar will definitely appreciate the opportunity in front of him when he defends his heavyweight title this summer.
"“I got a different take on life,” Lesnar said. “When you get everything taken away from you and you’re laying helplessly in a hospital bed - I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get back into the octagon, something that I have grown to just love to do. This is my life."
“I’ve always been in control. Always been in control of my life and my surroundings. For me to sit there for 15-30 days and not have control of anything, let me tell you. I gotta thank my wife and family for sticking by my side, Dana and the UFC. These people put everything on the line for Brock Lesnar. For them to be sitting here and be backing me, it makes me feel really good.”
It is a relief to fans and to the UFC that Brock will be back in the ring this summer. It's clear that his career came close to getting cut very short. After five fights, Lesnar has transcended a sport that is quickly becoming bigger than boxing in this country. Luckily, fans won't have to see how the UFC would respond without their biggest name in the fold.
Posted by: Eric Morken on 1/20/2010 at 2:15 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
UFC champ Lesnar to speak on Sportscenter tomorrow
UFC heavyweight champion and Alexandria resident Brock Lesnar is scheduled to update fans on his fighting status on tomorrow's 10 a.m. edition of ESPN's live broadcast of Sportscenter.
That is what 5thround.com is reporting after it was originally thought that UFC President Dana White and Lesnar would hold a press conference in Las Vegas early this week.
There was a lot of speculation on whether or not Lesnar would ever fight again after an intestinal infection forced him to cancel his fight with Shane Carwin at UFC 106. One of Lesnar's trainers, Greg Nelson, went on ESPN's MMA Live late last week and cleared up some of that doubt by saying that Lesnar will definitely be back in the Octagon again. He did not specify when that would happen, though.
"Brock Lesnar is definitely coming back to fight," Nelson told MMA Live. "He's just kind of coming up slowly, training, getting his body ready and being smart with his recovery."
That is good news for fans of the UFC. Lesnar has become probably the biggest name in the industry after winning his last four fights and becoming the heavyweight champion.
Before the illness sidelined him, I was scheduled to meet up with Lesnar for one of his training sessions and talk to him about his upcoming fight with Shane Carwin. That interview was canceled when Lesnar determined he was just not healthy enough to prepare for the fight.
Tomorrow's interview on Sportscenter will mark the first time that Lesnar has talked to the media since the illness. I would guess he will give fans a better understanding of what went on and when he hopes to get back into the ring.
Posted by: Eric Morken on 1/19/2010 at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
