Cloudy / 57° F
Yellowjackets take third at state tourney
Published 11:19am Monday, March 26, 2012The Perham Yellowjackets boys basketball team took home the AA third-place trophy on Saturday, after defeating Braham at Gangelhoff Center in St. Paul. The Jackets won 52-46. They were sent to the third-place game, after losing to Litchfiled 33-31 on Friday night.
Third-place game
Perham High School shot 52.9 percent from the field to pull out a 52-46 win over Braham High School in the Class AA third-place game Saturday morning at the Gangelhoff Center in St. Paul.
A game that was tight through much of the first period distanced out a bit early in the second, only to get heated again in the final minutes of play. Braham trailed 22-26 at the half and was down by as many as 12 in the second half.
Down 10 points, the Bombers came back to tie the game at 42-42 with an Anthony Bias layup with 5:18 to play. Bias was part of a Braham effort that sunk threes, ran the court in transition and made a series of defensive stops against a solid shooting Perham squad to get the crowd on their feet.
Perham’s Mark Schumacher and Jordan Bruhn answered to keep a one-possession lead with the Yellowjackets.
The fouling game gave Perham a 50-46 lead in the final minute and, despite the Bombers getting several looks at the hoop from long range, the Yellowjackets were able to maintain their lead for the third place win.
Schumacher and Jordan Cresap paced the Yellowjackets with 16 and 14 points each, respectively.
Bruhn finished with eight points and a team high 11 rebounds. Perham pulled down 36 boards to Braham’s 25.
Semifinal game
The defending champion Perham Yellowjackets resorted to a deliberate keep-away game late in the game, but one turnover and a failed jumper underneath doomed the strategy. Litchfield took final possession and employed the same strategy until calling a timeout with 14.6 seconds left.
The inbounds play got the ball to junior forward Zach Kinny who dribbled into the lane for an uncontested jump shot that dropped just before the buzzer.
Perham went close to seven minutes without scoring a single point in the loss. Anderson and Jordan Cresap, and Schumacher all scored seven points in the victory. Senior Mike Wiskow added two points in the loss.
Yellowjacket Seniors Schumacher, Bruhn, Anderson, Cresap, Wiskow, Dan Cavanagh and Zach Gabbard played a hand in the school’s first state title in 2011.
