Photo illustration by Ari Selvey Cedar Mountain’s Blake Schueller was announced as the 2024-2025 All-Journal Boys Basketball Player of the Year on Thursday as voted on by The Journal’s sports staff.

By Travis Rosenau

trosenau@nujournal.com

MORGAN — Cedar Mountain senior forward and center Blake Schueller has grown in more ways than one since he first stepped onto the court for the Cougars B-squad basketball team as a freshman.

It’s hard to think of the dominant 6-foot-5 post player as a point guard, but that’s what Schueller was throughout most of his basketball career.

Growing in height, leadership and talent every year he spent playing with Cedar Mountain, Schueller worked his way to the top of the school record books in multiple different areas. He finished second in boys career points at Cedar Mountain with 1,743 and first in career rebounds with 905.

Schueller’s dominant play helped guide the Cougars to a 25-4 overall finish this season, which included a 15-1 tie for first with Springfield in the Tomahawk Division, and it led the team to the Section 2A semifinals. Schueller’s consistent effort and ability also saw him named the Tomahawk-Valley Conference, Tomahawk Division Boys Basketball Player of the Year.

He added one more honor to his senior year of basketball as he was unanimously chosen as the 2024-2025 All-Journal Boys Basketball Player of the Year.

“I feel really honored to see these awards I have this year already,” Schueller said. “I just want to thank my coaches and teammates for helping me out this senior season to be able to make those awards.”

With Cedar Mountain senior point guard Blake Steffl’s jumper and pick-and-roll expertise, Schueller was able to have great success under the hoop this year as he averaged 27.3 points per game. He also averaged 13.5 rebounds and 2 blocks per game.

Cougars head coach Brian Pendleton said while Schueller was well under 6 feet tall when he came to Cedar Mountain, he was happy to see his level of play grow with his height over the years.

“His stats improved each and every year,” coach Pendleton said. “This year ending up at 27 points a game and nearly 14 rebounds as well. He’s just meant so much to the growth of our program. … He’s had one trip to the section finals as a sophomore and he was very key for us in that run as well. He’s a great kid and I know that’s he’s got some visits planned … But I do believe and hope he’s going to move on and play at the next level.”

In seventh grade, Schueller said he was around 5-foot-6 and got about 3 to 4 inches taller over the next year before starting on the Cedar Mountain B-squad team as a freshman at 5-10. He joined the Cougars varsity team a few games into his sophomore year and has continued his growth ever since.

“It was a pretty good growth spurt, I’d say [laughs],” Schueller said.

That height, which Schueller said he didn’t know where it came from, helped him gain confidence and ability to do things he hadn’t done in the past. However, it also presented him with the challenge of having to change up his game.

“Ever since I started playing basketball I’d been the point guard,” Schueller said. “Freshman year, I was a point guard and sophomore year … the Lakeview Christmas Tournament is when I really changed my game. Dakota Pendleton, he played my sophomore year and he was, I thought, one of the best passers I’d played with.

“I got my chance to get in the game for the first time, I ran that baseline and he always found me and Brian [Pendleton] saw the potential there. I just had to change my game and try to become a better 5 man and try to learn the rules of that.”

Schueller’s brother, Trey Peterson-Juhl, was also a two-time All-Journal player that graduated Cedar Mountain in 2020 with 1,029 career points. While the two are separated in age by five years, Schueller said he grew up with his brother playing a lot of basketball.

“I was in the same school as him, so first I was at St. Michael’s private school, a Catholic school in Morgan here, we have two schools,” Schueller said. “So I would be playing there and my step dad, Jake, he would coach and Trey would come to some practices and help me out there.

“Got to Cedar Mountain, seventh grade, and [Trey] taught me a lot. We have a basketball hoop in our back yard and we would go out there probably every single summer night and he was a big role in my basketball career.”

Schueller’s confidence in his game really blossomed during his sophomore year, a season that saw the Cougars knock off several teams in a Cinderella playoff run that ended in the Section 2A finals. During that 2022-2023 season, the Cougars entered the playoffs on a two-game skid with an 11-15 record.

They then ended up in the playoffs as the fourth seed in the North Subsection and defeated fifth-seeded Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop, top-seeded Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s and third-seeded Lester Prairie to make it to the section title game against the Mankato Loyola Crusaders. The Crusaders earned a 63-57 win to end the Cougars’ season and advance to state, but it was an impressive late run by the Cougars to say the least.

“I had a couple of good games towards the end of the season of my sophomore year and I felt like I was a pretty good player at the time … then the playoffs came sophomore year and I felt I really developed a better game and got my jump shot and got my name out there,” Schueller said.

Last season, Schueller averaged 21.4 ppg and 10.8 rpg. This season, Schueller took another step up on both ends of the court.

“I really got my shooting a lot better,” he said. “I think I shot 41% in the conference from 3 this year, and I feel like just my mid-ranges and my fadeaways from the post have gotten a lot better from last year … Also, with rebounding, I think 14 or 13 and a half [per game], so I think those are the main things I got better on this year, for sure.”

While his height and reach have aided him in his rebounding improvements this season, Schueller has matched up with several of the area’s top post players and rebounders and held his own at 180 pounds.

Sleepy Eye’s 6-8 Landon Wendinger, the Tomahawk leader in rebounds, got his share of boards while playing Schueller this season in two games, pulling down 13 and 16 rebounds in those matchups. Schueller was right there with Wendinger on the glass, however, grabbing 16 and 14 rebounds as the Cougars won both meetings.

“I think it’s mostly mentality,” Schueller said. “You’ve just got to think you can play with the same strength and same physicality as they do. [Landon] is obviously a great, strong rebounder and he’s obviously the best in the conference for rebounding. I just felt like I went in there with a good mentality of being able to be like, ‘Hey, I could compete with this guy and rebound and help the team out.'”

The Cougars’ dominant run this season ended in the section semifinals when BOLD defeated them in overtime. The game was sent to overtime after a buzzer-beating 3 by BOLD’s Hudson Vosika.

BOLD ended up defeating Madelia in the section finals to make it to state for the first time in program history.

“BOLD’s a great team,” Schueller said. “They have a lot of size, obviously. Jack [Gross] is 6-5, and that Will [Penkert] is also like 6-4, so they’re a big team and our game plan was really just to shut down Jack, that’s what we tried our best [to do]. We put two of our best defenders on him, trying to test him the whole game.

“Toward the end there, down the stretch when we had a 3-point lead, I personally wanted to foul so they couldn’t have a chance to beat us, but we decided not to foul and go after it and try to play defense. Hudson hit that shot on us and that’s how it goes. But that game was a really tough game and it was fun.”

Regardless of coming up short of the team’s goal of making the state tournament, the Cougars improved nine wins from a 2023-24 season that saw them finish 15-12 after a first-round playoff loss to the Lester Prairie Bulldogs. This season the Cougars got playoff payback over the Bulldogs in the section quarterfinals with a 66-50 win to advance to the semifinals game with BOLD.

As Schueller thinks about his college future, he had a visit with Bethany Lutheran College on Monday to explore the possibility of continuing his basketball career. Schueller is also one of Cedar Mountain’s top golfers and said he would consider playing golf in college also.

Until he reaches a decision on his future plans, he will continue his prep athletic career on the golf course as he looks to make it to the state tournament.