The Tigers took on the Becker Bulldogs last Friday in the section 5AAA championship.
These teams played each other twice during the regular season with Princeton winning both matchups.
The game got off to a quick start and both teams were flying up and down the court. Princeton got out to an early lead and didn't look back. They had big a big first half from both Cooper Drews and Cooper Nowak who scored double digits. Though they held the lead throughout the 1st half they did get into a tad bit of foul trouble at the end of the half. Haydn Stay had to check out of the game for the last couple minutes with three fouls. Down by nearly 20 at half Becker made a late surge and cut their deficit to 12 at half 42-30. The Tigers lead was sustained in part to them well outrebounding the Bulldogs. Anything that was missed landed in the Tigers hands.
Princeton started the 2nd half much like the 1st quickly, and it looked like they were going to blow the doors off the gym. Princeton had built up a 20 plus point lead, but near the halfway point the Bulldogs were able to put a halt to the Tigers run. Becker swiped the momentum the Tigers had and started to chip away at their lead. It seemed as if everything was falling for Becker, and Princeton couldn't buy a basket. It wasn't long before Becker trimmed the lead under 10 points. With under 3 minutes left the air had left the building, neither side could catch their collective breaths. But Princeton had finally found the back of the net and their defense made a couple big stops. After those stops Becker had no choice but to foul and send Princeton to the free throw line. They weren't perfect from the line but they did what they needed to to pull away once again. Their lead once again was double digits and they were able to watch the clock run down to zeros. As the buzzer sounded they were victorious 77-67 over Becker and were Section 5AAA champions! Along with being champions of the section they also punched their ticket to the state tournament!
They will be the #2 seed in all of class AAA at the tournament and will play against Austin in the 1st round tomorrow at 2pm at Williams arena.
Scoring:
Princeton
Cooper Drews 22
Cooper Nowak and Haydn Stay 17
Ben Hallberg 12
Evan Schimming 6
Aaron Keykal 2
Zach Andreson 1
Becker
Brady Paumen 21
Julius Hendricks 15
Alex Weiss 9
Eric Seavert 7
Hayden Harmoning, Carter Callahan and Nick Berglund 5
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