FIELD TWP – The North Woods boys basketball team took to the home hardwoods on Tuesday looking for redemption after last week’s 84-75 loss to Mt. Iron-Buhl on that very same floor.
What they got instead was a loss the likes of which North Woods hasn’t seen since the 2019 Class A state championship game, as the Cherry Tigers ran the Grizzlies out of the building, 84-59.
It was an ending few in the packed gymnasium could have foreseen after the first eight minutes of play. With the Grizzlies’ Brenden Chiabotti immediately matching Cherry’s opening trey with one of his own, both teams looked to be off to the races in a fast-paced slugfest. Playing without big man Sean Morrison, North Woods held its own on the boards, rattled Cherry ballhandlers and shooters on defense, and built a 14-13 edge on the strength of two treys by Davis Kleppe and buckets by T.J. Chiabotti and Alex Hartway.
Coming out of a Cherry timeout, the Grizzlies turned on the jets with quick seven-point run, forcing the Tigers to take another time out trailing 21-13 with 8:24 left in the half.
“Both teams came out very ready to play,” Grizzlies Head Coach Will Kleppe said. “We shot the ball well, we had some good ball movement, and some inside-out action where we hit some open shots.”
Once the ball was back in play, Cherry owned the court. Holding North Woods to a solitary T.J. Chiabotti bucket from the floor the rest of the half, the Tigers exploded in a 29-9 blitz that left the stunned Grizzlies staring at a 42-30 deficit going into the break.
“Just careless mistakes, a few turnovers, we didn’t capitalize on possessions,” Kleppe said. “You can’t do that against at team like this. They’re a great team, they’re always right there, and if you don’t make the most of your possessions they’re going to make you pay. We just couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
Every time the Grizzlies tried to cut into the lead in the second half, the Tigers had an answer and then some. After five minutes of trading points, Cherry still held a 12-point lead at 53-41. The Grizzlies continued to struggle on the offense end as the Tigers steadily pulled away for the 25-point win.
“When they got up by double digits, we forced some things and they took advantage,” Kleppe said. “We were really caught in a trap there where we were trying to get in and rebound to try to keep the ball alive but couldn’t afford to because they were getting the ball out and getting layups on us.”
Cherry’s eighth-grade phenom Noah Asuma topped all scorers with 28 points, all from the field. Jared Chiabotti and Jonah Burnett shared scoring honors for the Grizzlies with 12 each, followed by T.J. Chiabotti with 10.
Mt. Iron-Buhl
The Jan. 19 game against MIB was a tilt between evenly matched teams that was decided by a second-half Rangers run.
MIB led from the outset, holding leads from one to seven points, and the Grizzlies were within one at 27-28 when the Rangers closed the half on a 7-0 run to lead 35-27 at the break.
A baseline drive by Alex Hartway and fast break bucket by T.J. Chiabotti to open the second half got the Grizzlies back in the game at 35-31, but the Rangers quickly moved the lead to ten, 43-33.
North Woods trailed by nine, 54-45, when they made their next big push. Jonah Burnett dropped in two shots and a free throw, and Sean Morrison scored twice to tie the score at 54-54. MIB scored coming out of a time out, but a trey by Burnett gave North Woods its first and only lead of the game at 57-56 with just over seven minutes to play.
And then, having finally reached the top of the mountain, the Grizzlies fell off a cliff. Hitting at will from underneath and outside, the Rangers scorched North Woods with a 16-0 run over the next three minutes that effectively sealed the game. The Grizzlies got no closer than eight the rest of the way as the Rangers closed out the 84-75 loss.
The Rangers won with red-hot shooting, hitting an astonishing 65 percent of their shots and shooting 45 percent from three-point range.
T.J. Chiabotti poured in 31 points on 12-of-28 shooting to lead the Grizzlies, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the 35 points scored by MIB’s Asher Zubich. Jared Chiabotti dropped in 15 for North Woods, followed by Burnett with 12 and Morrison with 10.