I got my care package from my sister.  She has been recording the state tournament for me since I first moved overseas, and the arrival of the videotapes is an annual highlight for me.

I actually got two years worth.  By the time I got the tapes last year we were packing up to move to Israel, so they went into the crates unopened.  Then for a variety of reasons we did not finally receive our household good until last month.  So I finally had a chance to watch the 2006 tournament and 2007 back to back.

(By the way, I still have the tape of Joe Mauer and Cretin-Derham Hall in a great game with Osseo in 2001.  Also had CHOF that year, I believe, and Southwest Christian vs. Cass Lake-Beena, whose triabal drummers and dancers played THEIR national anthem before the game too.  That is a keepsake.)

The broadcasters are boring but acceptable I guess for a local station.  Kevin Lynch can be annoying at times, and Trent Tucker's analysis rarely venturs beyond "no doubt about it" but neither is a major problem.  Anthony LaPanta was bad (was he the guy who could not figure out why a team would intentionally miss their final free throw with 2 second left and a 2 point deficit?) but the one truly awful part of watching these tapes was Rod Simons.  My God, how can he be a professional broadcaster and be so competely incapable of making any comment without looking and sounding like he used every available intellectual and verbal resource to do it?  I don't care if 45 is a local station, he would not deserve a C in a middle school media class.  I have no idea if he is a nice guy or not, but he is a dreadful, dreadful host for the tournament.  In contrast, Leah B. Olsen was the person on camera who seemed like she might have what it takes to go national.  She is attractive, well spoken, and offered a few comments that were actually interesting.  But before I leave the media, I must mention the goombah who was doing the voiceover for the AAA (academics arts and athletics?) winners who pronounced Cokato COCK-a-toe.  Always nice to get that local feel to the broadcast, eh?  

We still had the anti-big man bias we often get from broadcasters, but nothing serious, certainly nothing like the creep in 78 or 79 who came an inch short of calling Randy Breuer a freak as he openly rooted for the "littel guys" he played against.

And it was odd to have those alternating PA announcers, one Wally Cox and the other Tex Baxter.

Strange to see 18 minute halves rather than 8 minute quarters.  The first game I had forgotten the MSHSL had made the change (I had read about it) and was wondering how long the damn quarter was going to last before it finally came to me.

Don't they have roster limits any more?  Some of those teams seemed like they introduced more than 20 players in the semi-finals.

By the way, I hate alternate intros, and have since it was introduced years ago.  For one thing, it is a classic example of imposed touch feely sensibilities.  But whatever the loopy intentions, the result is to force one team to constantly wait for their counterpart to finish his chest bumping before he finally comes out to shake hands.  This is an improvement over a team being introduced together?  How?

And it was interesting to see how many former prominent HS players were refs.  It seems they just love the game, so I will lay off my ref bashing for this one.  The only real complaint is that, contrary to complaints that NBA refs never call traveling anymore, HS refs call it TOO often.  Frequently the supposed violation was not traveling at all, from my perspective.  I see no reason to slow down the flow of the game unless it was very clearly traveling.

As for the games...

2006

Cory Johnson looked very talented, but I was more impressed with Rick Rickert when he was in high school.  He also got 3 fouls in about 3 minutes, all of which were touch at best, that fouled him out and ended whatever chances his team had against DeLaSalle.  (And I say that pretty objectively, since I was not rooting for East and liked the DeLaSalle team.  I would not mind having Rundles on my team.)  But since I promised not to pick on the refs, I think the better team probably won, so OK.  Fouls also took out the (I think) Pelican Rapids star and put a big crimp on Noah Dahlman (was that 2006 or 2007?) but that's the way things go.

From Stew's comments, I was expecting something out of the WWF when I finally saw Dan Vandervieren play.  I did not see the elbow monster at all.  He seemed OK to me.  And while I am not a fan of Novak, I preferred his sideline personality to that of Pauly from Cooper.  I am no fan of coaches who are "intense" or "tough" or "in your face" or any of those other euphemisms.

2007

Ah, the greatest year in the history of Minnesota high school basketball.  Forget AA and AAA.  A had a terrific game, with more talent than I ever expected at that level, in the Ellsworth-St. Bernard's matchup.  Mbakwe impressed me with his talent, but not his makeup.  Jeez, if you can't get excited about a state tournament game until the second half, it does not bode well for your future.  I wish him well if he proves me wrong, but I don't regret that he got away to Marquette.  But Cody Schilling is a big time talent.  Why am I not reading about recruiters beating down his door?  Are the Gophers going after him?  He looks like a real D1 talent to me.  Not just someone who coud play, but someone who might be able to star in the Big Ten.  (And has anyone noticed that he has a chance next year to not only set the all time scoring record, but the all time assists record too?  AND end up with more than 1,000 rebounds?  Amazing.)

And then we had one of the 4 or 5 best HS basketball games I have ever seen in the A final.  It was like Marshall-Cloquet, only better.  I am definitely saving the Ellsworth-Cass Lake Beena videotape as well.  Just a fabulous game, with the perfect ending.  (Is Van Der Stoep the best high school shooter you have seen too?)  And Ellsworth has a senior class of 15 kids?  Great stuff.

But the reason this season is really immortalized for me is, of course, my alma mater.  Buffalo makes the state tournament for the first time in 76 YEARS (the broadcasters kept making a big deal out of that too, and the fans seemed to adopt them, as they got great support) and what games!  

The semi-final was almost too corny to be true.  Buffalo is not only noticeably shorter than Lakeville South, they seemed to be outweighted by about 50 pounds per player.  And then Lakeville acted like football players (did they go to state or something in football too?) knocking my little Bison all over the court.  (I especially liked where our 5'8 point guard got a forearm shiver to his face, and got an intentional fall called -- on him!)  Then Buffalo's best player -- not just their leading scorer, but their all time leading scorer -- goes down with an injury.  The team is missing free throws, their star is watching from a wheel chair (gotta have that in the movie version) the team is down with just a couple of minutes to go, and of course they aren't METRO.  But somehow they hang on to win on a shot from the corner by their other 1000 point career scorer (two on this team, only two before this season in the history of the school) who had had a horrible shooting game until then.  High drama for the locals.

Then the title game was perfect.  It was a better game than the semi-final, terrific play and terrific shooting all around, one of the very best HS games I have ever seen even without the hometown factor.  But again, in a script Hollywood would reject for lack of realism, Buffalo has their star limping on one foot (but not missing a shot from the field in the game), their other star (and game 2 hero) woozy from a scary fall, their star of the game (and only kid over 6'3, skinny though he was) in foul trouble, and another starter trying to stay on his feet while suffering from the flu.  Oh, and the other team (I liked Armstrong) was again noticeably taller than Buffalo, and playing great (over 50% on threes for the game, I believe).  And the Bison trailed by double digits in the second half!  Yet somehow they came back and won the game on a last second drive and score by the kid with the foul trouble.  It doesn't get any better than this.  (Well, actually it would have been better to have been there and not know the outcome beforehand, but the games could not have been more perefect.)  Hard to think of anything that could ever top this for me in sports that doesn't involve my kids playing.            

Hope you all enjoyed it too.