File photo by Ari Selvey Sleepy Eye’s Brea Mertz (14) drives against Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart’s Lily Hubin (5) during a Tomahawk Conference girls basketball game on Nov. 30, 2023.

With the midway point of the girls basketball season in the rear-view mirror, the Tomahawk Conference has settled into position and has its eyes set on the push to the finish.

Two teams sit atop the conference standings, with just a single in-conference loss to one another to blemish their records — Sleepy Eye and Buffalo Lake-Hector Stewart.

Sleepy Eye took the first matchup between the two teams early in the season, erasing a 10-point halftime deficit to win the game 66-65. However, their game on Jan. 16 took a different shape as the Mustangs came away with a convincing 78-37 win over the Indians.

After dropping their first two games of the season to Sleepy Eye and Mountain Iron-Buhl, BLHS has been as hot as any team in southern Minnesota, winning their next 14 games, including 10 in the conference.

“I think that the first thing [that has brought us success] is our principles that we preach every singe day,” BLHS head coach Jesse Weick said. “I think that our defense especially as of late has been great. We play very pressure-style with pressing and a half-court man-to-man defense, so that sets the tone for what we do. We like to run in transition, so if we play teams that don’t like to play that style of basketball, usually playing fast and playing aggressive wins out against more of a slow-it-down kind of team.

“Then we have just phenomenal athletes, so I’ll give all the credit to them. We’ve been able to match up against anyone that we’ve played man-to-man, and at the same time take advantage of any mismatches that teams have. Those are the two big things, along with our team chemistry, that have helped us be where we’re currently at.”

BLHS is led by their trio of stars in seniors Rachel Kottke and Kristi Kottke and sophomore Lily Hubin. Rachel Kottke led the team in points per game in conference as of Jan. 12, averaging 20.6 ppg, third in the conference, while hauling in 7.9 rebounds per game. Kristi Kottke and Hubin average 16.4 and 16.1 points per game, respectively, good for sixth and seventh in the conference. Kristi and Rachel also hold the top two spots in the conference in assists, averaging 6.9 and 5.9 per game, respectively, a testament to their teamwork and unselfishness. With players like Jamie Novotny (9 ppg, 8.9 rpg, 60.9% field goal percentage) and Olivia Schieffert (5.9 ppg) playing their roles with good defense, the team has plenty of talent to keep them at the top.

BLHS finds themselves as the fourth-ranked team in Class A girls basketball according to pacesetters.com. Sleepy Eye, meanwhile, sits just behind them at the five spot.

“We are led by two strong seniors and a cast of juniors and sophomores,” Sleepy Eye head coach Sarah Hesse said. “These girls have been playing with each other since fifth and sixth grade. The team chemistry is good, they all get along, they like each other. They just know how to play basketball.”

Sleepy Eye relies on its own senior talent and solid depth to get wins. Last season’s All-Journal Girls Basketball Player of the Year Kadence Hesse is averaging 22.8 points per game in conference play as of Jan. 12, second in the conference, while averaging the third-most assists (5.8) and fourth most rebounds (8.8). Fellow 2022-23 All-Journal First Team member Brea Mertz is averaging the fourth-most points per game (20.2) while averaging the second-most rebounds per game (10.3) and leading the conference in 3-point percentage (11-22, 50%). That duo, along with supporting players like Paige Haala (10 ppg, 49% field goal percentage) and Cadence Okerman (9 ppg) have led Sleepy Eye to a 14-2 overall record, 8-1 in conference.

The Mustangs won the conference last season with a perfect 16-0 record in conference, with Sleepy Eye coming in second with a 13-3 conference record. Both teams fell short of a state tournament run as BOLD took home the section, knocking off BLHS in the second round and Sleepy Eye in the section title game.

Both teams know they have to continue to win in conference in order to take a share of the Conference Championship. BLHS has six conference games remaining, while Sleepy Eye has seven. Both teams will face off against the third-place team in the conference, Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s, who has a 9-2 conference record and has a shot at the conference title itself if it can avenge its early-season losses to both teams.

In order to avoid any upsets, Weick says his team will have to continue to play to their strengths.

“I think it all starts with our defense here,” he said. “I think that every team in our conference knows that we have athletes that love to play defense and love to run, so we need to make sure that we’re still doing what has got us to this point, and we need to understand that every single team that is going to play us from here on out is going to give us their best shot.

“To think that just because you beat them with running time the first time around doesn’t mean that a coach isn’t going to make an adjustment or that we won’t make our adjustments. Just taking the punches, but also making sure that our girls understand what we de and that we need to do what we do better than what the other team does better.”

Coach Hesse had similar thoughts about how her team could finish out the season strong.

“Just be consistent,” she said. “Continue to do what we’ve been doing, not get lackadaisical. Stay disciplined with what got us here and how we’ve been playing and don’t get off course that way. We’re still trying to fine-tune some things, even though we might be winning games in a big fashion, stay disciplined and get better at the things we need to get better at so we can get to the playoffs strong.”

In the two games that the teams have played each other, the losing team was the one coming trying to knock off the most rust. Sleepy Eye’s win was BLHS’s first game of the season, while BLHS won after a 10-day break for Sleepy Eye.

“The way that we started out in our first game, I don’t think that we could have started out any worse,” Weick said. “I think that our first six possessions were a turnover, and then we got a little complacent. Being here for four years now, we’ve never really had the experience of losing a regular-season game on opening night, so that was a different experience.”

“I think the issue was we hadn’t played a game for 10 days when we played them a second time,” coach Hesse said. “We played in Hayfield on a Saturday, which I feel was our best game of the season, and then we didn’t have a game for 10 days. You can only do so much in practice. You’re practicing against the same people you’ve practiced against, you’re doing the same thing. You need those games to stay fresh and engaged. We came out super flat. Unfortunately we don’t play well at BLHS ever, I don’t know if it’s psychological or what, but I think that not playing for 10 days was a big issue for us.”

It remains to be seen which team would win on a neutral playing ground in the rhythm of the playoffs.

YOUTH MOVEMENT

With much of the conference relying on young players this season, its no surprise that some of them have had standout seasons. St. Marys’ Morgan Mathiowetz and Cedar Mountan’s Aubrey Steffl have continued to improve on their standout eighth-grade season last year as freshmen. Both have recently passed 1,000 career points, with Mathiowetz achieving the milestone on Tuesday, Jan. 16, and Steffl on Friday, Jan. 19. Mathiowetz leads the Conference with 28.6 points per game while being third in field-goal percentage at 50.5% and tying with Steffl for fourth-most assists per game with 4.8. Steffl is also averaging 15.1 points per game, eighth in the conference, while hauling in 8.4 rebounds per game, seventh in conference. Other notable freshman performances include St. Marys’ Kylie Pelzel (10.4 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 36% 3-point percentage), Cedar Mountain’s Kendra Erickson (9.1 ppg, 7.5 rpg, 43.7 fg%), St. Mary’s Brynne Ibberson (8.5 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 46.8 fg%) and Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Olivia Hammer (7.9 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 84.6 ft%).

RETURNING TALENT

Though there are plenty of lower classmen having good seasons, its ultimately the upper classmen that still dominate the top of the statistics in the conference. Springfield senior Brooklyn Sturm is having another strong season, averaging the fifth-most points in the conference with 16.6 per game while leading the conference in rebounding with 13.3 a game. Sturm has the second-best 3-point percentage (21-51, 41.2%) and is averaging the sixth-most assists per game (4.1) in the conference. New Ulm Cathedral’s Jenna Hotovec is averaging 13.3 points per game in conference in her senior season, good for ninth in conference, while adding 7.1 rebounds and 3.1 assists. MVL senior Mackenzie Meresth is fifth in the conference in rebounds per game (8.6) and also leads her team in scoring (11 ppg). GFW hosts a pair of seniors in Marti Jacobson and Jenna Schweiss who are having good seasons as well, with Jacobson averaging 12.9 ppg (10th), 5.3 rpg and a 74.1 free-throw percentage (fifth), and Schweiss averaging 8.6 ppg, 3.9 rpg and 4.0 apg (seventh).