After free throws by Madelia freshman phenom Kaydon Firchau tied it up at 68-all with 30.8 seconds left, the Tigers took a timeout and looked to get the final shot off. Out of the timeout, a high pass to Brayden Sturm under the hoop with 15 seconds left was almost taken away. In a now congested lane, Sturm saved the ball before hitting the floor, while Parker Kuehn grabbed it and dished it back out to Fredin near the 3-point line.

Fredin took a few more seconds off the clock before dribbling to his right, pulling up from just inside the 3-point line and burying his shot to put the Tigers up 70-68 with four seconds to play.

“I hear it from the crowd and then it’s go time,” Fredin said of his game-winning shot. “Once you hear that [countdown], you’ve got to go get one no matter what the shot is, you’ve got to put it up. Big time save, it was huge to have that possession back, didn’t want to give it back.”

Madelia took a timeout with three seconds left after Fredin’s shot and had to take it the full length of the floor. While Josiah DeMaris got off a deep contested 3, the shot fell short as the Tigers held off Madelia’s comeback.

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Springfield’s Brayden Sturm holds the Tomahawk-Valley Conference boys basketball trophy following a win over Madelia Tuesday night in the Tomahawk-Valley Conference boys basketball championship game at Madelia High School.

Kuehn ended up leading the Tigers with 17 points, which he got all in the first half, while Bryan Buerkle had 12 points and six rebounds and Fredin finished with 10 points. Sturm ended with 9 points, seven assists and seven rebounds, while Madden Lendt had 9 points and Dylan Simonson added 8 points.

Firchau led the Blackhawks with 26 points, while DeMaris had 16 points and Hayden Jones had 12 points. Kyle Pietsch added 8 points, while Tate Becker had 7 points, nine rebounds and four assists.

Madelia’s comeback started when it was down as much as 14, 44-30, early in the second half. As the Blackhawks chipped away at the deficit, they cut it to 49-44 with a little more than 11 minutes to play after a corner 3 by Jones and a 3 by Firchau.

The Blackhawks got back-to-back tries to convert an and-one when Becker and Pietsch each scored while drawing a foul, but the extra free throws didn’t drop and the Blackhawks trailed 56-54. Dalton Tatro gave the Blackhawks their first lead of the game on a corner 3, 57-56.

Buerkle started to get his hook shot going in the closing minutes and one of his buckets in the paint gave the Tigers a 65-61 lead. Firchau scored on a layup, however, before sinking a 3 with less than two minutes to put Madelia back in front 66-65.

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Madelia’s Kaydon Firchau (0) reacts after hitting a second-half 3-pointer against Springfield Tuesday night in the Tomahawk-Valley Conference boys basketball championship game at Madelia High School.

Buerkle then hit the front end of two double-bonus free throws in a rowdy gym but missed the second to make it a tie game. Sturm got a pair of bonus free throws moments later and disregarded the noise by sinking both attempts to put Springfield back in front.

Firchau sank both of his one-and-one bonus free throws to tie it up, setting up the final chaotic 30 seconds which saw the Tigers leave with the first-ever Tomahawk-Valley championship trophy.

“The gym was packed, you love to see it, you love to hear it,” Sturm said. “You talk about in the huddle that you’ve gotta get used to stuff like this because these are the games we want to play in. When it comes playoff time, we expect stuff like this. Obviously winning that hardware is awesome to have, but you’ve got to treat it just like another game and just like we do with football, you’ve got to improve throughout the season until you get to the time that matters and then you perform.”

Madelia head coach Jeff Van Hee said he was proud of how his team played all the way through Tuesday night, which was different from the first time Madelia hosted Springfield this season on Feb. 10, an 84-58 win for Springfield.

“We played our butts off,” he said. “We played physical, we played tough and that’s exactly what we needed to do. They got out on us in transition in the first half and we shut that down the second half and we’ve got plenty of guys that were knocking some shots down we didn’t make the first game.”

Van Hee also said he tried to call a timeout at halfcourt before DeMaris took his final shot but was disappointed it wasn’t noticed. With the playoff atmosphere and battle that was, however, Van Hee said he didn’t want to take anything away from his team’s effort and the game itself.

“We played more physical this game, we denied them straight line drives more often and the only time they really got any was in transition,” Van Hee said. “We cleaned that up at halftime, we talked about that. Setting screens, getting Kaydon open and really just hitting shots.

“The first game we were right there, too, we just didn’t drive. And I know their defense, give them credit for doing that and I think they played pretty hard tonight, too, we just were able to knock some shots down. In normal circumstances, that’s what got us a lot of wins this year.”

The Tigers took control early in the first half thanks in large part to Kuehn, who scored 11 of the Tigers’ first 12 points to help give them a 12-9 lead. After a bucket inside by Pietsch, a 9-0 run that was finished with a 3 by Simonson put the Tigers up 21-11.

DeMaris stopped the run with a 3 of his own, but a bucket inside by Lendt and a 3 from Fredin put the Tigers back up double digits, 26-14. The Tigers took a double-digit lead into halftime, 37-26, after Kuehn drove the baseline and finished in the paint.

“With the playoff atmosphere , it’s going to be good later down the road to build off of it and learn what we can do better,” Fredin said. “It was huge, it was cool to get that [conference title] to bring it to Springfield.”

The game’s biggest question mark coming in was the health of Sturm, who twisted his ankle last week during a game against Windom Area. Sturm missed this past Friday’s game at Tracy-Milroy-Balaton, a comeback win for the Tigers, but he said he didn’t feel much pain at all Tuesday morning after a full practice Monday and was ready to go.

“Obviously TMB I wanted to get in, the game was awesome and we knew it was going to competitive and all, but it really wasn’t worth the risk of, you know, ‘What happens if I do tweak it again and I’m out for all of playoffs,'” Sturm said. “That was a huge win [against TMB], obviously I was sitting on the edge of my chair the entire time on the bench, but I was just as much in the game as I ever could be.”

Springfield fans were definitely happy to see Sturm be in the game literally on Tuesday, however.

Now both teams wait for the Section 2A playoffs to begin. The Tigers, now 25-2, drew the No. 1 seed and next Tuesday will host the winner of this Friday’s No. 17 Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop vs. No. 16 United South Central game. The Blackhawks, now 20-6, are the No. 4 seed in the tournament and next Tuesday will host the winner of this Friday’s No. 20 Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart vs. No. 13 Nicollet game.