by MHSFan50 » Thu Mar 19, 2015 10:02 am
Agreed as far as the bench shrinking as teams move through the tournaments. We saw that both in the regional and state tournaments from many teams. I think the benefit that Minot had is that, although they did have a "standout" player in Halvorson, they also had a number of other guys that could (and did) step up on any given night. Who would have expected Lund to go for 25 and 12 (the 12 is realistic, but the 25 didn't happen all season), or Bolinske to go for 20 in the championship. Engg put up 17 in the WDA championship. In fielding a team of "capable" athletes, I think it frustrated teams that keyed on certain players, and then others stepped up and produced nice games. I'm not saying that this team is the #1 team in history, but their depth, ability to score from multiple players, defensive tenacity (teams struggled to score against these guys, with exception of a couple games, as shown by the opponent scoring average) and overall heart has to put them in the conversation somewhere.