Clock ticking away the seconds to the end of the Boys Basketball 8-AAAA sectional championship game. St. Cloud Tech down by 2 with 2.5 seconds left, shoot, score, game over. Heads hung low and a silence from the fan section as the boys watched their season come to an end March 19 at Hallenbeck Hall St. Cloud State University. The Bison had a 13 point lead (36-23) after the first half of the game, but that fell shortly during the second half. Tech senior Nick Jordan shot an outstanding 3 pointer to make the ending score 61-60.
“I couldn’t believe he made that shot,” said Senior Brock Korbel, “It’s a shot he would have made 1 out of 10 times and he was lucky to get it to fall. We had them where we wanted them, and our coach put us in the best position possible to win that basketball game.”
Although falling short of a point to continue in the MSHSL State tournament the boys had a successful season with a record of 23-6.
“Our last game was one of our top 3 performances” said Senior Dan Ngandali. “We did everything we could to try and beat an undefeated potentially state team. We just came up a little short. Our season was fun, we got to compete against top teams in state which made the competition tougher.”
The Bison put up a fight throughout the entire game. Senior Brooks Beilke, and Junior Brent Kettenacker were leading scores with totals of 14 points each. Coming in with 9 points each Seniors Brady Matzke, and Korbel. Tech Senior Nate Wolters had a total of 32 points as their leading scorer. With a tough competition throughout their season the boys took pride in their goals and achievements.
“We had a successful season and accomplished a lot of goals we set for ourselves we exceeded alot of peoples expectations for us this year,” said Korbel.
With next year in mind, the team will be loosing 6 seniors and is hoping the underclassmen will take charge. The Bison varsity line-up consists of 9 juniors, and 1 sophomore for this years roster, with high expectations for next years underclassmen to excel.
“We won conference and made a run in section. We wish we could’ve gone farther but, its a great accomplishment,” said Kettenacker. “Next year we are going to get a bunch of JV and returning players to step up.”
