Title clinched with one last defensive stand

MEDFORD BOYS BASKETBALL

The Great Northern Conference boys basketball championship came down to one point and 7.5 seconds Friday, and, fortunately for the Medford Raiders, they had the one-point advantage over Northland Pines and came up with that last all-important stop to clinch the first of their lofty end-ofyear goals.

Logan Baumgartner and Charlie Gierl teamed up to smother Ryan Muench’s attempt to score off a baseline inbound play and preserved Medford’s 59-58 win in a thriller at Raider Hall between two very good teams that know each other well and share a heavy mutual respect.

The victory put Medford at 11-0 in the GNC with one game to go, clinching the outright title over the 8-2 Eagles. Had Pines won, there would have been lots of intrigue left with Medford’s last GNC game being Friday against a potent Mosinee squad and Pines being favored to win its last two over Lakeland and Antigo.

“That’s what you expect,” Medford head coach Ryan Brown said. “You’re not sure if one team or the other is just going to be blistering hot. Both teams are capable of that. But there’s too much fight in both teams and both teams just wanted it so badly that you just had this feeling it was going to come down to some shot at the end.”

“Just pure joy I guess,” was the reaction of Medford’s Charlie Kleist, one of the seniors who grew up being handed several losses by Pines’ vaunted senior class but now has been part of three wins in four outings at the varsity level the past two seasons. “After all of these years of losing, it’s good to finally get ahead of them, get one on them. They’ll dominate in Division 3 I’m assuming and we’ll hopefully do our thing in Division 2. I hope we both go far in the playoffs and represent the GNC.”

Kleist was a major factor in the win, scoring 18 points, pulling down eight rebounds and leading the Raiders through the first half when Baumgartner was out with two early fouls. Baumgartner still ended up with a game-high 19 points and hit three clutch 3-pointers in the second half to put Medford in position to win it.

Medford led through most of the first half, but Pines got on a late run and tied it going into the break at 32-32 behind a pair of 3s from their All-GNC senior point guard Nolan Lurvey. Miles McCanles missed a 3-pointer to start the second half, but the long rebound came back to him and he found Pines’ main inside force, 6-6 Gabe Smith, on the block for a layup and Muench hit a 3 to give the Eagles their largest lead at 37-32.

Baumgartner, though came back with back-to-back 3s, one from the top of the key over Muench and the other from the left wing off a Tanner Hraby kickout to give Medford a 38-37 lead. The next 15 minutes was a tooth-and-nail battle to the finish line.

“It was just my teammates getting me open and then just trusting my shot, staying calm,” Baumgartner said. “Even if I miss there, we’re in a good spot. We can score whenever.”

Gierl, a sophomore, got some key minutes off the bench due to foul trouble with Baumgartner and forward Ty Metz. He hit a big 3 with about 9:30 left from the top of the key to give Medford a 46-43 lead. Senior guard Zach Rudolph made what Brown called two of the most unheralded yet biggest plays of the game with six minutes left and Medford down 52-51. The Raiders turned it over, but Rudolph sprinted back to cut off Lurvey from getting to an uncontested layup. Seconds later, he stole a Lurvey pass and that possession turned into a Baumgartner score in the post and the lead. Baumgartner, moments later, kicked out to Hraby for a 3 that put Medford up 56-52.

“That was huge, the poise he showed in getting that stop when we really, really needed it to not allow them to extend that lead,” Brown said. “It takes everybody. It’s guys that come in every day on that bench. It’s the crowd. This felt like a sectional game. It was packed in here. It was a lot of fun.”

Lurvey had eight assists and nine rebounds, but Rudolph had a key role in limiting him to eight points on threeof-11 shooting. “The whole year I’ve been trying to watch film on him to prepare for him,” Rudolph said. “Him and (Mosinee’s) Keagan Jirschele, they’re good matchups. Those are the guys you have to be prepared for because they can beat you. I was just going to pick him up at halfcourt. I wasn’t going to overdo it. I’m going to try to get into him when I can, just slow him down a little, maybe force him into an area.”

The Eagles quickly tied it, then Baumgartner somehow hit an off-balance 3 from the left corner that put Medford up 59-56 with 3:43 left. McCanles hit two free throws with 3:16 left and from there, the defenses gave up nothing. Pines ran over a minute off the clock on its final possession. Lurvey missed an off-balance shot, but Medford couldn’t quite grab the rebound and it went out of bounds on the baseline with 7.5 seconds left. During a timeout, Lurvey inbounded the ball and came around a Smith screen at the top of the key, while Muench worked down the lane off that screen and got an entry pass from McCanles. But when he got it, he was too far under the basket and had nowhere to go with Baumgartner and Gierl waiting for him.

Brown said in the timeout, the Raiders talked mainly about protecting against action that might get Smith open for a quick shot.

“Give credit to our guys,” he said. “You always talk about how you don’t know what teams are going to do so you have to stick to your principles. I think Logan read that play almost perfectly. They went with the elevator screen and then ripped it, hoping we’d pull away our baseline guy. Charlie Gierl and Logan deflected the ball and that was huge.”

“I think they were trying to get it down in the post to Gabe,” Baumgartner said. “I think Charlie (Kleist) did a great job denying that. It turned out Ryan Muench was posted up and then with that little time, I know what he’s feeling. You want to get it up, you want to get a shot and then we just played good D. We had good help line, got the rebound.”

Hraby contributed 10 points to the win and five rebounds. Metz had seven points and eight boards before fouling out. Gierl had three points and two rebounds. Rudolph had two points, two rebounds, three assists and that one big steal. Baumgartner had six rebounds. Kleist got most of the post-game accolades.

“That’s the Charlie Kleist we know is in there all the time,” Brown said. “He’s been really good all year, but there’s times where we want him to be that and we know he can be. Sometimes he doesn’t attack like we want him. Tonight nothing was going to stop him. When he got that ball, he was going aggressively. He was only thinking pass if he had to pass. That’s what we need from him moving forward.”

“In practice he can’t be stopped,” Baumgartner said. “I know when he wants to score he can do it. There was no better time than tonight.”

With the conference wrapped up, the seniors said the focus remains to finish strong as the Raiders push toward their ultimate goal.

“We knew we had the ability to win the conference at the start of the year,” Kleist said. “That’s always a goal we have at the beginning of the year. We’ve had our ups and downs throughout the year, losing games we should have won and not playing up to what we know we can. But that’s not the main goal. The main goal is we were less than 10 points from state last year. At the beginning of the season that’s still the goal. The goal has not changed. We have to stay focused on state.”

Medford 79, Everest 68

Medford maintained its winning ways on Tuesday, quickly erasing a hot start by D.C. Everest and efficiently dissecting the Evergreens’ defense in a 79-68 nonconference win at Raider Hall.

D.C. Everest (14-6) got 33 points from its outstanding 6-6 senior Marcus Hall and Casey Stuedemann was a perfect seven for seven from the field to score 17 points while finishing on several drive and dishes.

But that wasn’t enough to keep up with the Raiders, who put five players in double figures. They were led by 30 points and five assists from Baumgartner, while Hraby made all six of his free throws in a 13-point outing. Rudolph had an outstanding first half on both ends of the floor and hit all five of his shots for 12 points. He added four steals.

Metz had 11 points and seven rebounds and Kleist had 10 points and four assists.

Hall followed a Cohen Priebe 3-pointer with three straight 3s of his to give Everest a quick 12-2 lead, but it didn’t take long for the Raiders to make that up. Down 17-11, Baumgartner blocked Hall down low on one end and the Raiders turned that into a Hraby 3. Baumgartner knocked down a 3 as did Rudolph. Kleist scored to cap the 11-0 that put Medford up 22-17 and the Raiders never trailed again.

Rudolph’s steal and score made it 2921, Kleist scored off a Metz assist to make it 33-22 and Hraby drove and scored with seven seconds left for a 35-24 halftime lead.

Doing most of their damage with inside screens, cuts and passes, the Raiders got the lead as high as 23 on Gierl’s 3-pointer, his only points of the night, which made it 61-38 with under nine minutes to play. The Evergreens did tighten things a bit down the stretch, getting within 72-63 on a Hall steal and score with 1:19 left.

But Baumgartner’s football quarterbacking skills came in handy as he hit Metz with back-to-back long passes for layups, including an and-one, to seal it at 77-63.

After Medford’s trip to Mosinee Friday, the Raiders will conclude their regular season at Raider Hall on Feb. 23 by hosting Wausau West in non-conference play at 7:15 p.m. Seeding for the upcoming WIAA Division tournament will be announced on Sunday.

Medford’s Logan Baumgartner and Charlie Gierl smother Ryan Muench’s shot under the basket in the final seconds to preserve Medford’s Great Northern Conference championship clinching 59-58 win over Northland Pines Friday.MATT FREY/THE STAR NEWS