WIAA DIV. 5 SECTIONAL PREVIEW - Little scouting needed as very familiar foes square off

WIAA DIV. 5 SECTIONAL PREVIEW

Deep research wasn’t needed this week to put together scouting reports for the WIAA Division 5 boys basketball sectional semifinal to be played tonight, Thursday, at the Tomahawk Fieldhouse.

Neighbors and longtime Marawood Conference friends and rivals Rib Lake and Prentice worked their way through regional week to get to the sectional level of tournament basketball and earn the right to face each other in tonight’s 7 p.m. matchup. It will be the third and most important meeting of the season between the squads, who won on each other’s home court during the regular season.

Rib Lake, the fourth seed in the sectional half-bracket, won the Marawood North title with a 12-4 record and is 20-7 overall after defeating one-seed Mellen 7150 in Saturday’s regional final and surviving a tough battle with five-seed Flambeau 76-68 on Friday. Rib Lake clinched the North championship with a 59-54 win at Prentice not quite three weeks ago.

Prentice, meanwhile, is the six-seed in the bracket. The Buccaneers (16-8) finished what was probably to them a disappointing 8-8 in the Marawood North, but they’re playing some of their best basketball now. On Friday, they went to third-seeded Owen-Withee and beat the Eastern Cloverbelt Conference cochampions and defending sectional runner-up 68-59 and then made the long trek to two-seed Bayfield Saturday and outlasted the Trollers 60-53 to earn their regional plaque. Prentice, under first-year head coach Adam Blomberg, won a Jan. 6 game in Rib Lake 44-41, a result the Redmen said actually served as the turning point for their regular season.

Now the two schools that finished second at state together in the fall as a cross country co-op and spent many years together as a football co-op will battle in what is sure to be an intense playoff atmosphere for the chance to get one step away from qualifying for next weekend’s state tournament in Madison.

“I guess it’s kind of fun to have two teams from the Marawood North represented,” Rib Lake head coach Todd Henderson said in Mellen Saturday moments after both teams had clinched their regional championships. “I’m sure it will be a battle. Both teams know each other well. The kids know each other well. Hopefully it can just be a fun, friendly battle and we’ll see who’s the better team that night.”

“Whatever team shows up that night is going to win,” Rib Lake junior Talon Scheithauer said. “It’s one of those games.”

Both teams feature junior-dominated rosters and have just one senior. Rib Lake has three freshmen in its rotation. Prentice has one.

Both squads have reliable big men inside and get steady play on the perimeter as well. As the regular-season scores between the teams indicates, both are capable of playing strong defense.

Aiden Hause, a 6-3 center, and Evan Lord, a 6-2 guard, both juniors, are the driving forces behind Prentice’s attack. Hause, a first-team All-Marawood North choice this season, averages a doubledouble at about 16 points and 10 rebounds per outing. Lord, a second-team All-North choice, leads the Bucs in scoring at about 18 points per game. Lord had 29 points in the win at Owen-Withee Friday and Hause had a big night at Bayfield on the boards and getting good looks inside when the Bucs broke down the Trollers 2-3 zone. Lord scored 27 of Prentice’s 54 points in its Feb. 21 loss to Rib Lake.

The Bucs probably wouldn’t be considered a prolific 3-point shooting team, but they can hit them when left open. Lord is the top threat behind the line, but sophomore Hagan Isaacson hit the tie-breaking 3-pointer with 1:40 left at Bayfield Saturday and he had a big 17point outing Friday and junior Heston Hueckman hits them at about 30% as well.

Rib Lake counters with Marawood North Player of the Year Jed Henderson. The 6-5 junior averages 16.3 points and 10.5 rebounds per contest. He had an 11--point, 14-rebound double-double in the loss to Prentice and had 23 points and seven boards in the win. Junior guards Scheithauer and Seth Borchardt have been major leaders for the Redmen all year long, but they’ve stepped their games up a notch down the stretch, making it difficult for teams to just collapse on Henderson. Mellen found that out Saturday when Scheithauer and Borchardt burned them for 29 and 28 points, respectively. The Redmen are at their best offensively when they move the ball and share it and don’t particularly rely on 3-pointers either. But, like Prentice, they have shooters certainly capable of hitting them.

Defensively, both teams got through regional week relying primarily on their man-to-man approaches, but both used some zone wrinkles when needed. Facing a prolific 30-point-per-game scorer in Quintin Bresette Saturday, Prentice used junior Eliah Harding and freshmen Ledger Jones to face-guard him as much as possible in the first half. Bresette got off to a hot start but cooled off after that. The Bucs used a 1-3-1 zone with Hause at the top of it down the stretch while finishing off the win.

Recently the rivalry has been relatively close. Rib Lake swept the two games last year, while Prentice got the sweep the year before.

Despite their close proximity, the teams have not met all that frequently in WIAA tournament play. The last meeting was in the first round of the 2020-21 tournament. Prentice won that 58-47. Rib Lake won a regional semifinal game 56-49 in 2014-15. The teams did meet in three straight regional finals from 2009-11 with Prentice winning all three of those.

“It’s Marawood North basketball,” Jed Henderson said Saturday. “We kinda knew it was going to be them or Owen-Withee out of the bottom side of the bracket. Prentice is a really good team. I think we all know guys on that team, have good friends there. We’ve played against them forever. I’m pretty confident. We split earlier in the year but we knew each other well. We’re going to grind at practice this week and go do our best and see what happens.”

“I’m ready,” Borchardt said. “We know they’re a great team. They played really well against Owen-Withee. We just have to play like we do. Play like we do, play our team basketball and I think we’ll have a good shot.”

The other side

Tonight’s winner will advance to the sectional championship game Saturday, set to be played in Hayward with a time to be determined. Tonight’s other sectional semifinal has two-seed Spring Valley (215) and one-seed Turtle Lake (19-5) meeting at Chetek.

Spring Valley shared the Dunn-St. Croix Conference championship with Durand-Arkansaw at 12-2 and breezed through regional week with wins over South Shore (86-27), Clayton (62-45) and Frederic (52-31). The Cardinals lost both conference games to Durand-Arkansaw, but a final-game upset win by Colfax over the Panthers allowed Spring Valley to move into the tie.

This is a senior-led team, highlighted by all-conference guard Cade Stasiek, who averages 18.5 points, nine rebounds and nearly six assists a game. Masyn Wolf, a 67 senior post, averages 12 points and 11 rebounds. Caleb Bartko, a 6-4 senior has some solid all-around numbers as well. Turtle Lake went 13-5 to tie Unity for third place in the West Lakeland behind Clear Lake (17-1) and Grantsburg (15-3). The Lakers beat conference foes Luck 6452 and Webster 53-35 in regional play last weekend.

They get 21 points and 15 rebounds per game from 6-6 junior Brandon Wagner. Rib Lake beat Turtle Lake 87-79 in a regional quarterfinal two years ago in a nine/eight matchup.

Rib Lake's WIAA Division 5 boys basketball regional championship team includes (l. to r.) head coach Todd Henderson, Riley Johnson, Ty Niemi, Briley Leonhard, Jeremy Wiitala, Talon Scheithauer, Josiah Mann, Jed Henderson, Brady Heiser, Blake Henderson, Seth Borchardt, Lucas Cook, Chris Krause, Ethan Cook, Slade Scheithauer and coaches Luke Gebauer and Paul Yanko. MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS