BACK-TO-BACKNORTHTITLES - NEW GROUP KEEPS THE CROWN

BACK-TO-BACK NORTH TITLES

Understandably with the loss of four seniors from last year’s championship team and freshmen, for the most part, stepping in to fill a lot of those minutes, the Rib Lake Redmen weren’t viewed as the pre-season favorites in the Marawood Conference’s North Division.

But after a hard-fought 59-54 win at Prentice Friday, there the Redmen were again at the top of the North heap, champions for the second straight year.

“It’s a nice thing, a little unexpected this year,” head coach Todd Henderson said Monday after the Redmen tacked another victory onto their win total with a 63-54 win at Chequamegon. “We were hoping to fight for it. It’s always nice when you get those because they don’t come around very often. I try to remind the guys of that. If you look at the banner in the gym, there aren’t a whole lot of them up there. We have to enjoy them when they happen.”

“We were picked third in the conference and that was fair with four guys coming out,” junior guard Seth Borchardt said. “But that put a chip on our shoulder and makes this one extra special.”

“It’s very cool,” Talon Scheithauer said. “Just from last year we had four seniors that kind of led the team. Those guys graduated. Just for us to step up and work together with all of these guys, I mean I’ve been playing basketball with these guys since third grade, so it’s rewarding.”

With one game left in the regular season tonight, at Phillips, Rib Lake stands at 12-3 in Marawood play and 176 overall. The Redmen now hold a fourgame lead in the conference over Phillips and Prentice, who tied for second at 8-7. Rib Lake started the season 1-2 overall after the opener at Columbus Catholic got away in the second half in a 54-37 loss and the Redmen were pounded in game three at Stanley-Boyd 72-51.

But a come-from-behind, last-minute 55-54 win at Marathon in game four put the Redmen at 2-0 in Marawood crossovers before they’d even played a North game. Since then, any loss or rough patch has been followed by a win streak creating a satisfying regular season and momentum heading into the WIAA Division 5 post-season, where the Redmen are a dangerous four-seed going into regional play next week.

“I think it was just a result of guys working hard,” Todd Henderson said. “They do a good job of boxing out, rebounding. We take care of the ball, we’re patient working it around and let stuff develop for us. We really look to find each other. We’re at our best when we’re passing and cutting. We have guys that can drive and dish. We work well as a team that way.”

Not only is this group a team, it is a brotherhood, literally. The three freshmen who are part of the regular rotation have junior brothers in the starting lineup. Blake Henderson has been in the starting lineup from day one with his 6-5 brother Jed, who has emerged as a candidate as the North’s Player of the Year and would likely get votes as the conference’s most improved player if there was such an award behind his nearly 17-point and 11rebound per game averages. Slade Scheithauer has settled in and improved weekly on the perimeter while Ethan and Lucas Cook are glue guys doing the dirty work inside.

While the Redmen started out a little rough, those bonds undeniably helped things pull together in the last half of December.

“I think there’s an unspoken chemistry, speaking from an external standpoint,” Borchardt said. “Getting to see that, all of those brothers, I think they look up to these guys and they mesh well.”

“I think there definitely is a little,” Talon Scheithauer said. “We’ve never really played with them because they’re at a different grade level and they weren’t in high school (until this year). But just from backyard ball, playing two-on-two and stuff like that, you build a little connection.”

“I know my brother and I we’ve played countless games of one-on-one in the backyard,” Jed Henderson said. “Pretty much every day in the summer we’ll play for a couple of hours. He guards me better than anyone I know. He’s a lot better basketball player than I was as a freshman. It’s exciting to see how the freshmen have grown.”

Jed Henderson said the Marathon game is the one that sticks out to him as an early turning point.

“It was a weird game,” he said. “We weren’t playing our best. They weren’t playing their best. We were down by about 10 with a couple minutes left and we ended up making a couple of big 3s and Talon hits a massive 3 to put us up by one. That was a game where we realized we have a good shot at this.”

Borchardt actually pointed to a loss, a 49-41 home defeat to Prentice on Jan. 6 as the turning point. So far, that’s Rib Lake’s only loss to a North team. The others in league play were to South powers Auburndale and Stratford.

“That really hurt in the moment but I think that was one that was really good for us,” Borchardt said. “We learned from that about finishing games, grinding them out. I think we won three games in a row decided by three points right after that. That was a big turning point.”

“I think it was just about finding our roles,” Jed Henderson said of the team’s improvement. “In the first game, we really didn’t know how to go. It had been since middle school since we were playing together. I’ve grown a lot better since then. These guys have gotten a lot better and developed their game since then. I just think figuring out how we worked as a team was big. We were definitely not at our best in that first game. We’d like to have that one back. I think we could give (Columbus Catholic) a run for their money.”

The post-season run starts Tuesday when the Redmen host 13th-seeded Thorp (2-20) at 7 p.m. Barring a major upset, Rib Lake will host either fifth-seeded Flambeau (16-6) or 12th-seeded Winter (2-22) in a regional semifinal March 7. The regional final could take Rib Lake to oneseed Mellen (19-3) for the regional final.

Unspoken for now, the third-seeded Owen-Withee Blackhawks (18-5), who eliminated Rib Lake in last year’s regional final and beat then 64-50 in nonconference play Jan. 27 wouldn’t be seen until the sectional semifinal on March 13.

“One game at a time,” Borchardt said. “Chequamegon is a team with not a great record but (Monday), when we didn’t play our best ball, that’s just like the playoffs. We can be beat. We have to take it one game at a time.”