The No. 4 Seed New Glarus Knights upset the No. 1 team in the state, the Roncalli Jets. The Jets with their third consecutive state appearance, including last year’s title, with the Knights returning to state for the first time since 1932.
An exciting first half gave us the Knights starting with a 5-0 run, then it was the Jets flying back to take a 15-11 lead with 11:01 left in the half. Then with 2:26 left in the first half, the Knights retook the lead 29-27, before heading to halftime with that same score.
In the first half, it was New Glarus senior, Zach Feller, leading all scorers with 13 points. Fellow New Glarus Knight senior, Jaden Kreklow, had 10. Leading the way for the Jets was senior, Chombi Lambert, with nine points.
The second half started much like the first half ended, with New Glarus continuing to set the tone on the court. The halftime lead of 29-27 grew to 37-30 after 8:10 of play with a solid zone defense limiting the Jets and solid Knights offensive play. We were tied at 41-41 with 1:11 left in the game and it was Kreklow following his own eight-foot jumper miss to get the offensive rebound and basket, putting his Knights ahead by two. A Matt Levene three-pointer for the Jets with 53 seconds left rattled out and Mason Martinson pulled down the Knights board. It took the Jets until 22.5 seconds left to send the Knights to the free throw line and it was Kreklow hitting 1 of 2 to give the Knights a three-point lead. The Jets had one more chance after a Coach Travis Sysko timeout and 7.8 seconds left to tie the game. The Jets were able to fire off two three-pointers, neither able to fall and the Knights pull off the upset, 44-41
When asked about their chances of pulling off the upset, Coach Sysko, said, “We have a very confident group of players. Yeah, we’ve lost a couple games this year but we never doubted our ability to win this game”.
Kreklow lead the Knights with 21 points and played all 36 minutes of the game. Zach Fuller put in 13. The Roncalli Jets were led by Lambert who scored 12 and also played all 36 minutes, Ian Behringer had 10.
The New Glarus Knights advance to the Division 4 State Championship game which will be played on March 15th at approximately 12:45 PM at the Kohl Center in Madison, WI.
