FIELD TWP – The North Woods boys basketball team ran its record to 18-4 this week with big home wins over Hill City and Mesabi East.
The Grizzlies got off to a fast start in this one with Louie Panichi, Talen Jarshaw, and Jonah Burnett all draining three-balls to start the game, and with a Luke Will free throw thrown in held a 10-2 lead early. The Grizzlies’ press was effective early on, with Aidan Hartway converting a turnover for a lay-in and a 19-7 lead. Hartway scored again on the next possession, upping the advantage to 14 points. But the Hornets began to find success by going down low to 6’4” forward Jacob Roper, who converted a bucket and charity to narrow the gap to 23-17. Both teams looked rough on offense as the half wound down, but North Woods got a basket from Jarshaw, a pair of free throws from Will, and a buzzer-beating trey by Burnett to take a 42-29 lead into the locker room.
After a Hill City trey made the score 45-37 with about 14 minutes left in the game, North Woods made a move to pull away, using their defense and speed to good advantage. Evan Kajala smartly tapped a rebound to Panichi who hit Jarshaw on the fly for a fast break bucket and a 59-40 lead with 11 minutes left. A Burnett deuce and pair of free throws sandwiched around a Panichi 15-footer maintained the North Woods edge at 74-57. A make by Kajala, another trey by Jarshaw, and a driving basket by Will made the score 87-55 and signaled mop up time for the Grizzlies bench for the final three minutes of the 92-65 win.
It wasn’t the sharpest of efforts by the Grizzlies, something Head Coach Andrew Jugovich attributed to the long grind of a high-intensity season.
“It’s been a long season and I think the boys are finally getting tired out,” he said. “This is when they need to pick it up. As coaches we really need to dig deep and get them excited because the end is coming.”
Jugovich noted that the Hornets’ big man Roper gave the Grizzlies fits.
“Their big number 33 was hard to move, and our guys struggled – I mean, that kid is big,” Jugovich said. “It’s hard to play defense on him and just stay with that, to keep fighting him when it feels like a losing battle. One of our weakest points this year is getting backside help consistently. We switched it up towards the end and it worked for a few possessions. Luckily we won’t have to see a guy that big for the rest of the year besides Deer River, and hopefully we’ll get that fine-tuned by then.”
For the second game in a row, Jarshaw led a balanced North Woods scoring attack with 21 points, followed by Burnett with 20, Panichi with 13, and Will with 12.
Mesabi East
The Giants came calling on senior night last Friday, a night on which the Grizzlies honored a senior who hasn’t played a minute but has been on the court with them all season, Tra’von Boshey, who died in a November car accident.
Boshey’s No. 10 jersey was draped on the first player chair on the bench, and by arrangement with the Giants and the referees, senior Jonah Burnett tapped the opening tip back to senior Luke Will, and all the players stood silently in place as the Grizzlies took a symbolic 10-second call to acknowledge Boshey.
“Tra’von was a great kid, we loved having him in class,” Jugovich said. “It hurts knowing that he would have been out here doing something he loved and he never got a chance to. The boys wanted to do the ten-second call, they came to me with it, so that was big for them to give that moment of silence for him to give that respect. He’s still in our thoughts every day.”
True to their name, the Giants put a bigger team on the floor than the Grizzlies, but they were no match for the Grizzlies’ speed, defensive ferocity and offensive firepower. The Grizzlies turned the Giants over early and had the running game cranked up, with Will scoring on a fast break to give North Woods a 12-6 lead at the 11:20 mark. The Grizzlies cooled off for the next two minutes until a Burnett three and a Panichi fast break got the offense rolling again. North Woods took a ten-point lead on a basket by Jarshaw, then amped up the full-court pressure, fueling a big-time run that left the Giants reeling under a 53-23 halftime deficit.
North Woods stayed on the attack in the second half, with Burnett scoring the deuce that started the continuously running clock with a 35-point 73-38 lead. The scoring slowed and the teams played even down the stretch with the Grizzlies claiming an 84-49 win.
Jarshaw put up 21 points to lead the Grizzlies, while Burnett hit for 19, Will knocked down 16, and Panichi scored 15.
Jugovich was impressed with the Grizzlies first half performance.
“It’s not often that we put up 13 points in nine minutes and then finish the next nine with 39 more,” he said. “We really took it to them once we got into our groove, but we’ve got to be able to hit that faster.”
Fond du Lac
A delay in getting into their groove in a Thursday home matchup against Fond du Lac had the Grizzlies staring at one of their biggest deficits of the season, as the Ojibwe bolted to an 18-point 32-14 lead at the 7:20 mark of the first half. A Jarshaw triple with 3:30 left in the period put the Grizzlies on track to trim the deficit to nine at the half 41-32.
The Grizzlies were down 11 at 45-34 when another Jarshaw trey at the 16:48 mark put them on track to make the uphill climb necessary to take the lead.
A Burnett double and a trey, Jarshaw putback, a Will fast break and a pair of Panichi free throws brought the Grizzlies back to even at 48-48, and an old-fashioned three-point play by Jarshaw gave North Woods the lead with 14:02 remaining. The Grizzlies never trailed again, riding their momentum to a 97-81 win.
The Grizzlies’ defense came to the fore in the win, forcing 34 Fond du Lac turnovers and holding the Ojibwe to 27 fewer shots from the field. North Woods also had a solid night from the charity stripe, going 19-of 26 for 73 percent.
Burnett came up huge for the Grizzlies with 42 points, going 14-of-30 from the field and acing a perfect 11-of-11 from the line. The big game helped move Burnett back up the list of the state’s leading scorers for all classes, where he was slotted sixth as of Tuesday. Jarshaw pumped in 24, and Panichi added 10.
North Woods was scheduled to start a challenging four-game finale to the regular season with a home game against Littlefork-Big Falls on Thursday, followed by a Friday road trip to Chisholm.
On Monday the Grizzlies will be in Ely to take on the Wolves, then return home next Friday to take on Deer River. The Warriors represent the biggest obstacle on the schedule, sitting just five spots below the 26th-rated Grizzlies in the playoff seeding formula rankings.