File photo by Ari Selvey Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s freshman Olivia Schieffert (2) looks for an open player during the Knights’ Section 2A title game with BOLD on March 7 at Bresnan Arena in Mankato.

MINNEAPOLIS — Last time the Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s girls basketball team made the state tournament it was 2021. COVID-19 regulations were still in place, and so the team did not get the full state tournament experience that year.

“It was COVID, and I went and watched the one game,” St. Marys’ Amelia Schwartz said. “It was fun, but it wasn’t everything you wanted when you go to the state tournament.”

Schwartz was still on the JV team that year, but this time she gets to make the full trip with the rest of her team as the team’s lone senior starter.

“I’m super excited,” Schwartz said. “And I think the rest of our team is just over the moon.”

St. Mary’s head coach Bruce Woitas said the team is taking full advantage of the experience of going to the state tournament.

“I think it’s going to be a lot of fun,” he said. “They’ve worked really hard throughout the year to earn this opportunity and we’re going to try to take full advantage of it and get that full experience. There’s a banquet on Tuesday night [March 12] that we’re going to have the kids come up to and we’re going to come back up on Thursday and do our best to try to compete and represent our section. I think the kids are going to be excited for it, and we’re excited for them as well.”

St. Mary’s is seeded third in the tournament and will be taking on the sixth-seeded Sacred Heart Eagles in the first round of the tournament at 5 p.m. at the Maturi Pavilion at the University of Minnesota. Sacred Heart went 24-6 this season and comes out of Section 8 in the far northwest of Minnesota. The Eagles average 63.6 points per game and give up an average of 48.2 points. St. Mary’s, meanwhile, averages 75.8 points for and 40 points against.

“From what we’ve seen so far from them, they’re also a very young team as we are,” Woitas said. “I believe they start four sophomores. They have a little bit of size, the have two six-footers [Lydia Riskey and Lexi Lawrence], so they try to really emphasize their inside game as well. Based off of what we’ve seen, we really like the matchup that we have, so we feel pretty good about that matchup that we bring.

“They look like they’re going to be a really scrappy team as well, looks like they’re going to play more of a man-to-man type defense and apply some pressure and stuff like that. Something that we haven’t seen for a while, so hopefully we’re going to be ready for it and it should be a fun battle.”

St. Mary’s has a smaller team this year, but also a quick one. When it comes to taking on bigger teams, Woitas said they are likely to front taller player to prevent them from getting post touches.

“We’re going to emphasize that,” Woitas said. “We’re going to play frontside with denial and have backside help if we can get that. That’s one way we’ve been playing really good of late is our defense has been really effective in man-to-man, and if we can do that — obviously BOLD had a couple of girls as well too and we defended them pretty well — if we can do what we’ve been doing for 31 games so far this year and just continue that, there’s going to be opportunities to play well.”

St. Mary’s perhaps had a strong test-run of that strategy three times this year against Martin County West. MCW’s top scorer, Emily Anderson, stands at 5-10 and is a skilled post scorer and led the Mavericks to a 23-7 season, but the Knights defeated the Mavericks in all three of their matchups this season.

St. Mary’s comes into the game with a 27-2 record and hope to continue their success in defending the basketball and getting the ball to multiple scorers.

“We had a slow start to the BOLD game offensively,” Woitas said. “So we’ve got to make sure that every possession is going to be important. We’ve got to have good positive possessions throughout the game. And in a game like this, you’re probably going to have some times where there’s going to be some swings of momentum, and we’re just going to have to be ready to answer those and try to stay in the game for those 36 minutes.”