Waconia Wins Conference Title With Victory at Hutch

     The Waconia Wildcats clinched their second consecutive Wright County Conference championship with a 63-47 win at Hutchinson on Thursday night. When Orono lost to Holy Family that meant with an 11-1 conference record and the next closest team in the big school division having 5 losses with 3 conference games to play, the Wildcats locked up the big school division title.

     This year with the two divisions there will be two conference champions with Annandale leading the small school division. There will be no big school vs. small school championship game so the Wildcats can officially count on a trophy in the display case and another title hanging on the banner in the gym.

     So how did the Wildcats get there? They got off to an early lead and maintained it throughout the game. A 34-25 halftime lead was maintained for much of the second half until the Cats started to pull away and build the lead to 20 with about 9 minutes left in the game. The scoring attack was extremely balanced with Anna Schmitt scoring 12, Morgan iverson and Steph Dressen netting 10, Caroline Jacobs scoring 9, and Miranda Schultz getting all 8 of her points in the 2nd half.

    Waconia was 24 for 70 from the floor (34%) while Hutchinson shot 19 for 58 (32.7%). A big key to the Cats win was their domination of the boards. Waconia grabbed 39 rebounds including 17 offensive boards. Hutch managed 34 rebounds but only 8 of them were offensive. Steph Dressen led the rebounding parade with 11 rebounds, Iverson added 9. Dressen had 5 blocked shots as well. Anna Schmitt dished out a game high 7 assists.

     The 9th grade team lost to Hutch for the 2nd time battling to a 10 points loss. Hallie Koppie led the scoring with 18 points. Our JV Cats were triumphant though it was a battle in the closing minutes. A 15 point Wildcat lead was whittled down to a 4 point win in the final minutes as the Tigers came with tenacious full court defensive pressure. But when the dust settled the Cats came away with a 53-49 victory.

     Next action for our Wildcats will be on Saturday when they host section opponent Benilde. By all appearances, the game will determine the 3 and 4 seed for the section playoffs. The winner will almost certainly be the 3 seed. Tipoff of the varsity game is 4pm. It is also parent night so join us before varsity warmups to recognize the parents that sacrifice so much to help their daughters and our basketball program!