Raiders enter the record books, but vow they’re not done yet

BACK-TO-BACK GNC CHAMPIONS

Expectations were high among coaches and players for Medford’s boys 2020-21 boys basketball season but, for the second straight year, the results probably surpassed most pre-season hopes in a Great Northern Conference championship run.

The Raiders clinched their second straight outright title Monday with a convincing 76-53 win at Raider Hall over Northland Pines, a team that gave Medford one of its two biggest scares so far in league play when the teams met Jan. 5 in Eagle River. Medford escaped that night 56-51.

On Monday, Medford shot out of the gates, taking leads of 21-0 and 28-4. Though Pines made a run and pulled within 37-25 late in the first half, the Raiders scored the last four points of the half and opened the second half with a little 11-5 mini-run that pushed the lead back over 20. They weren’t seriously threatened the rest of way and extended their GNC record to 11-0 and overall record to 21-2.

The 21 wins in a season is a new school record and many of the team members have played major roles in the team’s 23-0 mark in GNC play over the last seasons. The Raiders will look to make it a perfect 24-0 tonight, Thursday, at Mosinee, a team that is a solid 8-3 in the GNC and 15-8 overall. The conference title is Medford’s third in 13 seasons of GNC play and it’s the first time they’ve repeated.

“It’s especially nice going back-toback,” senior Ty Baker said. “That hasn’t been done in boys basketball before so it’s cool doing that. The other night we tied for the best record in school history, so tonight we got the best record, which is pretty cool. That’s what we’ve been working for all year.”

“We have bigger goals yet,” senior Nate Retterath added. “We have to win more though.”

Head coach Ryan Brown said before this season of COVID uncertainty started, his goal was to give the team as many opportunities to compete as possible and give them as many tests as possible because he felt the potential was there for a big season. Once tonight’s game is played, the Raiders will reach their full allotment of 24 regular-season games with many of them, especially on the non-conference side, being against challenging foes. He said the team’s growth during the last two and a half months has been impressive.

“I knew we had the potential of winning the conference and going somewhere,” he said. “But there’s always those question marks of who is going to step into those roles of being the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth guys. They just took such a jump. Maybe the biggest jump of guys we’ve had from juniors to seniors. They just raised their game to that next level physically, mentally and just how they play together. I knew it was possible, but they put in the work to get there.”

Even last summer, the Raiders were using every opportunity and facility they could find to get games in to prepare for whatever kind of season they would have. Senior Brady Hupf said he sensed the chemistry starting to build then.

“We knew we lost a lot of seniors from last year,” he said. “But we played in the summer together a lot. We always have. Then it just started clicking in the sum- mer. We knew this would be one of the best teams we’ve had. We just kinda grew from it and kept going.”

“The chemistry was always good,” Retterath said. “We didn’t know how many games we were going to have. To get this far has been good.”

“There was definitely a lot to worry about, especially coming in with fall sports and people getting quarantined, schools going out and stuff,” Baker said. “So we didn’t know if we were going to have a season. To have a season like this is pretty cool to have.”

“I know we always argue about the best team and everything, especially when Brown says we played better schools this year,” Hupf said. ‘He’s always talking about the 2016-17 group. But I think we took it this year.”

Retterath noted that even the losses, which came against Division 1 teams Chippewa Falls and River Falls of the Big Rivers Conference, were positives because they showed the Raiders where they needed to get better. Games against teams from the Big Rivers, the Wisconsin Valley Conference and squads like Tomah, Appleton Xavier and Edgar who were state-ranked at the times Medord faced them were moments the seniors said they looked forward to.

“I think a big game was Menomonie,” Hupf said of a 59-44 road win on Jan. 18. “We kinda figured they’d be more of a playoff-caliber team we were going to face. We played them well, shut them down and got out of there with a 15-point win.”

In conference play, the Raiders have gotten two down-to-the-wire tests from Northland Pines and Rhinelander and Mosinee gave them a solid push at Raider Hall in a 62-51 Medford win Jan. 8.

“It was definitely Rhinelander,” Baker said of Friday’s 54-50 win that sticks out to him. “We kinda killed them the first time. We definitely knew they were going to come back for us. Conference was on the line, if we would’ve lost that we would’ve tied.”

Dating back to the last three games of the 2018-19 season, Medford is actually carrying a 26-game GNC winning streak into tonight’s game at Mosinee. With the conference title wrapped up and WIAA Division 2 tournament play starting next Friday, the Raiders say this game still means a lot.

“With Mosinee being our last game, it’s always a rivalry,” Hupf said. “It doesn’t matter what sport it is.”

Medford drew the top seed in its revised WIAA Division 2 regional bracket and will host either fifth-seeded Lakeland or fourth-seeded Merrill in a regional semifinal Feb. 19.

“They just come in and work,” Brown said. “They believe in what we do. That’s something we talked about before tonight, just believe in our system and our teammates and trust because we know it works when we’re all playing together. I’m really proud of them they’ve worked hard to get to this point. But we’re not finished.”

Monday’s win

As for Monday’s win, the Raiders jumped ahead quickly by forcing several

GNC CHAMPS on page 26

MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS

Medford’s Peyton Kuhn flies by Northland Pines Eagle Deven Millis for an easy lefthanded layup during the Raiders’ game-opening 21-0 run. Kuhn scored a career-high 37 points in the 76-53 win.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS