Wolverines Beat Storm, Win Regional Title

The Crivitz Wolverines faced one of their toughest, most high-pressure games of the season against Kewaunee on Saturday and passed with flying colors to secure a regional title.
Kewaunee puts on a tough press, which gave Crivitz coach Jeff Baumann some cause for concern from the start.
“After the first three or four possessions, I was pretty worried. I’ve never worried about a team as much as I worried about Kewaunee because they’re so good at pressing,” Baumann said. “We’ve turned it over more than I would have liked this year, especially in the last quarter of the season, we haven’t been passing very well, so I did not feel very good about this game, and it started out a little poor.”
Crivitz started off with a 4-0 lead, but Kewaunee went on a 6-0 lead to take the advantage back.
The two teams went back-and-forth, with Kewaunee taking as large as a six-point lead, 17-11.
An 11-2 run capped off by a Sean Christiansen basket saw the Wolverines go ahead 22-19. At halftime, the Wolverines were up 35-29, with Kaden Klaver scoring the final points of the half.
Kewaunee kept fighting, tying the game back up at 39-39. After the teams traded buckets at 41-41, Brady Tadisch, Tegan Werner, and Jackson Flowers scored points to give the Wolverines a 47-41 lead.
Werner extended it to 11, 53-42, with a 6-0 run by himself. From that point, the closest it got was seven, as Baumann’s boys kept the Storm at arm’s length.
“I can’t be more proud of them. There’s nothing I can pick on in this game,” the Crivitz coach said. “Kewaunee is excellent. They play as hard as anyone we’ve played, and we were fortunate enough to put the ball in the hole and come out the winners.”
Thomas Stangel finished with 24 points to lead the Storm effort.
Werner led the Wolverines with 26 points in another stellar effort.
“He’s unbelievable. He’s the only kid I’ve coached in 15 years who I went into this game saying ‘I don’t know if I’m going to take him out,’” Baumann said. “He’s so important to us ball-handling wise. Without him, I don’t know if this game turns out the same way.”
Since the start of the playoffs, the No. 2 seed Wolverines have been on a collision course with No. 1 Saint Mary Catholic.
That one is coming up Thursday at 7 p.m. in Oconto Falls, with a sectional championship berth at stake.
Saint Mary Catholic beat Oconto 84-81 on Saturday to wrap up a regional title.
The Zephyrs have lost just twice in 26 games this season and can put up points in a hurry. They’ve scored 100 or more points on four occasions this season, including a 101-62 win over Manawa in regional competition Friday night.
The Zephyrs’ top scorer is senior Cole Uhlenbrauck, a St. Norbert College commit. He averaged over 20 points per game this season.

Maroons Push Past
Panthers With Big
Second Half 54-42
Thursday’s game between Menominee and Ewen-Trout Creek was one between two teams that qualified for state championships last year.
This year hasn’t been easy sledding for either team, but they played a well-contested ballgame on Thursday. With the final result, Menominee continues to look like a team on the ascendancy.
Menominee started slow, trailing 10-3 right off the bat. At the end of the first quarter, it was 13-6 Panthers.
“I didn’t really recognize our ballclub for most of the first half. I just thought our focus was not real dialed-in at the beginning,” Menominee coach Sam Larson said, noting that the Maroons weren’t able to put aside distractions like senior night before the game.
“A great team would forget about all of that and just come out and play, and I didn’t think we had that for pretty much most of the first half,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily a full lack of effort, it was more a lack of discipline. Our defensive rotations, we would play a great possession of 30 seconds of defense and then one person would miss a rotation. We would play another great stretch of defense and then all of the sudden we’d miss a boxout and they’d kick it out and knock down the three.”
Menominee was better in the second quarter, cutting the lead to 24-22 by halftime, but it was really the third quarter that saw the Maroons start to roll.
Connor Coduti scored twice and the Maroons would score the first nine points of the half to take a 31-24 lead.
The Panthers pulled it back to three at 33-30, and the Maroons led 35-32 at the end of three quarters.
“They played a game where they really wanted to take the air out of the ball and not get in a running match with us,” Larson said of the Panthers. “We were able to change that tempo in the third quarter. I thought in the third quarter we really ran hard and kind of busted it open a little bit just by our transition and getting some easy ones.”
Trevor Theuerkauf made an and-one to take a 43-35 advantage early in the fourth quarter. Landan Bardowski got a steal and a bucket to extend it to double figures with under four to play.
Ewen-Trout Creek looked to rally the troops with a timeout down 11 with 3:23 to go, but Menominee stayed hot. Theuerkauf nailed a triple to extend the lead to 17 and the Maroons would coast to the 12-point win.
Trevor Theuerkauf scored 18 points. Coduti scored 13, Kaden Starzynski got 10, and Tanner Theuerkauf added seven.
E-TC’s leader was Austin Gordon with 17 points.
Since Feb. 9, the Maroons have lost just once, a defeat against Great Northern Conference champions Kingsford. They’ve won their other six games since then to improve to 12-10 overall going into Wednesday’s district opener against Bark River-Harris.
“We’re going to really wipe the slate clean tomorrow and look at this as a brand new season,” Larson said after the win over Ewen-Trout Creek. “We’ve had a lot of highs over the course of the season and we’ve had a few lows, but none of it really matters now, so we’re going to take what we’ve worked on for four months and try to be just as crisp and clean and intense as we possibly can be going forward in the next week.”
BR-H is 7-15 overall, including a 68-21 loss at the hands of Menominee on Feb. 10.
The winner of that one faces either top-seeded Iron Mountain or Manistique.

Bulldogs Booted Off
Tourney Trail by
Hot Shooting Wolves
It’s rare to see a high school basketball team make the 3-point shot as well as Winneconne did in a 78-64 win over Peshtigo in regional action Friday night.
The Wolves made 13 of their 20 triples in the game, led by 3-for-4 tallies from Austin Wiedemeier and Logan Loether and a 4-for-6 game from Collin Braman. Brady Immel connected on two of his three triples.
Braman and Loether scored 17 and 21, respectively, to lead Winneconne in scoring.
“Winneconne’s a good ball team. We caught them on a night where they couldn’t miss,” Peshtigo coach Jason Boucher said.
Peshtigo trailed 41-35 at halftime, although the lead was in double figures several times during the first half.
“There were times in the first half where that lead ballooned up to 13, 15, and next thing you know, we come back to cut it to three,” Boucher said. “My kids could have folded under the pressure of the big crowd tonight, and I’m proud of my guys. We fought all night.”
Seniors Kaine Fort and Mason Doberstein scored 17 and 16, respectively, to lead the Bulldogs.
Landon Beyer, Cole Grabian, and Grant Bauman also graduate this spring. Bauman scored seven and Beyer scored three on Friday night. Grabian recorded a steal in his final game for Peshtigo.
“Every senior we had, they’ve meant a lot to Peshtigo basketball and we’re going to miss them tremendously,” Boucher said. “It’s going to be a different team next year without those guys. I just wish them the best and I’m proud to be their coach for the last couple years.”
Fort had five assists and a team-high 12 rebounds. Will McMahon scored 11 with five rebounds and four assists, and Kavin Kleikamp scored seven with five assists.
The Bulldogs finished with an 18-8 record including one playoff win and one loss.
“It didn’t go the way we wanted it to go, but I’m pretty proud of this team,” Boucher said. “We had a heck of a season. Didn’t want it to end tonight, but unfortunately we ran into a buzzsaw tonight with Winneconne.”

Tigers Beaten by
Bluejays in Battle
for Regional Crown
Gillett couldn’t overcome a 10-0 run by Three Lakes to start Saturday’s Division 5 regional final as the Tigers were eliminated by a 62-54 score.
The Blue Jays’ hot start kept them in a 33-24 lead at halftime and they went on to win by eight.
“Give Three Lakes credit because they came out with a very intense half-court man set that we struggle with,” Gillett coach Russ Young said. “It was not until about the last three minutes of the first half that someone other than Jesse [DeBauch] or Aydin [Franti] was able to score.”
Franti had 10 points in the first half and DeBauch scored 12. They finished with 18 and 21, respectively.
Austin VandeCorput scored nine on three makes from downtown in the second half.
Gillett’s season ends with a 17-10 record, including playoff competition. Saturday’s loss marks the last time seniors VandeCorput, Blake Goodreau, Virgil Herzog, and Cody Carroll will suit up for the Tigers.
The team has eight juniors as well as a couple of sophomores, including DeBauch.
“All things considered, I feel like this team had a terrific season,” Young said. “Our struggle next year is going to be replacing Austin VandeCorput. We will bring a lot of experience back next year and hopefully get further than the regional finals.”
No. 2 Three Lakes faces No. 8 Gibraltar on Thursday in Suring. Gibraltar upset No. 1 Florence and No. 4 Oneida Nation last week.

Wolverines Cage
Cougars in
Regional Semi’s
Crivitz and Coleman faced off twice on the hardwood in the regular season, ending in 49-42 and 61-45 Wolverine wins.
The playoffs can often be a different animal, but it was more of the same Friday as the Wolverines won 61-45 once again.
Crivitz started the game hungry, taking a 14-5 lead off the bat.
Coleman pulled it back to 16-15, but the Wolverines pulled back out to a 30-19 lead at halftime off the back of a 10-2 run, with Brady Tadisch scoring at the buzzer.
Coleman hung around for most of the second half, slicing the lead to 34-28 on a shot by Trent Mongin.
Late in the second half, just like at the end of the first half, the Wolverines went on another run.
Up 10, Kaden Klaver hit a 3-pointer. After a free throw from Coleman, Klaver extended it to 15 with another triple.
“Kaden Klaver came in and hit two big shots and Kade Thoma came in and played good defense. They’ve played really well,” Crivitz coach Jeff Baumann
Sean Christiansen scored to take a 17-point lead, and Crivitz finished the night off with a 16-point advantage.
“We had two spells of about two minutes tonight. The last two minutes of the first half, they extended the lead because we stopped getting back on defense and they got out in transition,” Coleman coach Jeff Bronson said. “Then we worked all the way back to cut it into single digits in the second half, and about the six-minute mark, we did the same thing. We gave them two minutes where they just out-ran us and scored.”
Outside of those two spurts, the Cougars played pretty good basketball.
“Hats off to Coleman. They played hard, they had us flustered,” Baumann said.
The Wolverines got 19 points from Christiansen and 14 from Jackson Flowers.
Klaver’s two triples in the second half made up his six points. Tegan Werner scored eight and Tadisch got 11.
Coleman’s leader was Joey Olsen with 18. Mongin scored eight, followed by seven from Logan Kurth and six from Evan Hockers.
Hockers, Mongin, Olsen, Mitchell VanDeWalle, and Hunter Shevy are all seniors for the Cougars.
“We could be here for a while with that one, because I started working with this group when they were in eighth grade and I’ve had most of them in football, too,” Bronson said when asked if there was any comment he wanted to make about his graduating group. “I’m going to miss them. They’re great kids.”
Coleman finished this season with 16 wins, as well as 19 the year prior, but Bronson will remember more than the wins and losses.
“They’re all special kids, and you have so many memories. A kid like Trent Mongin, who you look at stats and you’ll never understand how important he is because of all the things he does. There’s a kid that’s going to be so successful down the line,” Bronson said. “My kids love him, and that alone is going to be hard to replace because they see him all the time. We’re kind of a big family. That’s what we do.”

Blue Devils Edge Chiefs
in Regional Semi-Final
Friday’s regional matchup between Oconto and Shiocton was all about offense. In the end, the Blue Devil offense prevailed, 86-83.
The game was as close of a contest as you’d expect from a No. 4 vs. No. 5 regional game. At halftime, Oconto led 44-38.
When the teams met in the regular season on Nov. 29, Dominik Baxter, Kadin Baxter, and Carter Koch all scored 20 or more points. On Friday, that trio led the way once again.
Koch scored 27 in the game and Kadin Baxter added 26. Dominik Baxter finished with 18.
Cooper Campshure and Trenton Hartman scored 11 and 15, respectively.
Shiocton’s Dawson Schmidt scored 38 points. Bennett Wilcox (15), Jacob Klitzke (13), and Bennett Schmidt (12) all crossed the double-figure mark as well.

Blue Devils Fall
in Regional Finals
to Zephyrs 84-81
Oconto came ever-so-close to upsetting Division 4 No. 1 seed Saint Mary Catholic in the regional final on Saturday night but fell 84-81.
The high-flying Blue Devil offense led 41-38 at halftime and things were tight again in the second half, but the Zephyrs scored 46 to do just enough to slide past the fifth-seeded Blue Devils.
Charlie Nackers got hot in the second half for Saint Mary. He scored 18 of his game-best 26 points in the second half to lead the Zephyrs to a win.
Danny Griffith scored 12 of his 19 after the halftime break as well.
Oconto’s trio of top scorers led the way again. Kadin Baxter, Dominik Baxter and Carter Koch each scored 20 or more.
Kadin scored 25, Koch scored 22, and Dominik finished with 20.
Cooper Campshure scored seven, all in the second quarter, and Jackson Martin finished with five.
Oconto finishes the season with 17 wins. Kadin Baxter and Kipper Gering graduate this spring.

Bobcats Bounced
From Tourney Trail
by Vikings 59-39
Top-seeded Florence was upset by No. 8 Gibraltar in the Bobcats’ first regional game Friday night, 59-39.
The Vikings’ Carl Burgess scored 21 to lead the way in the upset.
Florence’s Dominic DeMuri scored 10 points. Logan Schuls and Evan Johnson each scored nine points and William Kelley added seven.

Patriots Knocked
Off Tourney Trail
by Thunderhawks
Goodman/Pembine was eliminated at regionals by Oneida Nation on Friday night, 64-50.
The Thunderhawks’ Ethan Danforth scored 25 points to lead the effort. Dane Van Boxtel scored 15.
G/P got 16 points each from Ryan Ehlert and Ryan Erickson. Kyle Braaton added eight points.

Tigers Rip Regional
Game From Rebels
With Big Second Half
Defense and a big offensive improvement in the second half propelled the Gillett Tigers to the regional final with a 56-42 win over Laona/Wabeno on Friday night.
Leading just 17-15 at halftime, the Tigers scored 39 points after halftime while holding the Rebels to 27.
Aydin Franti scored 12 of his Tiger-best 15 in the second half. Jesse DeBauch scored nine of his 13 in the second half and Austin VandeCorput got 10 of 14 after the half.
Ben Matczak scored nine points for the Tigers.
Adam Seeber scored 18 of the Rebels’ 42 points.