North Dakota
In last year of co-op, Four Winds-Minnewaukan beats Oak Grove to reach state tourney
FARGO — It’s not over yet for the long-standing co-op of Four Winds-Minnewaukan in northeast North Dakota. The two communities will be packing their suitcases one more weekend for a trip to the North Dakota Division A state boys basketball tournament.
They won’t have to go far from the Scheels Center, where the Indians defeated Fargo Oak Grove 60-50 Saturday afternoon in a state play-in game. The state tourney is across the street March 19-21 at the Fargodome.
It’s the final year for the Indians, with Four Winds going on its own and dropping to Division B while Minnewaukan will pair up with Warwick. It’s turning this season into somewhat of a going-away party.
“Most of these kids, they’re all friends, they’ve all grown up together,” said Indians head coach Rick Smith. “It’s a little sad in a way that we won’t get to see their kids anymore. It is what it is. It’s something out of our control but we have to move on and keep our focus on Fargo again next weekend.”
At 22-3, there have been plenty of victory celebrations.
It was looking easy for another one leading 48-34 early in the fourth quarter, until the Grovers scored seven straight to make things interesting. It was still a seven-point game with 3:15 left.
Anna Paige / The Forum
But Oak Grove went scoreless from that point until Ryder Soper’s steal and dunk with 29 seconds remaining. It was a double-digit lead at that point for the Indians.
“Too big of a hole in the first half and they won some battles and hit some shots when they had to,” said Oak Grove head coach Kyle Card. “We came out the second half and took it to them a little bit but they stretched it out too much.”
The last state appearance for the Indians was 2022 when they won the Class B championship, before getting moved to Division A the last three seasons. No longer will they have to watch teams on TV in the state tournament they’ve beaten during the season.
“We thought there might be a Class A jinx for a bit,” Smith said. “You have to be playing your best basketball come region time. Every region game is going to be a dogfight. The key tonight was to come out with a quick start and that’s exactly what we did. You can’t take these for granted because they don’t come around too often.”
Marial Deng, a 6-foot-5 University of North Dakota football recruit, led the way with 22 points. Four Winds-Minnewaukan showed some balance with eight players scoring.
Anna Paige / The Forum
Oak Grove finished 15-10, with the Grovers winning six of its previous eight heading into Saturday. Four Winds-Minnewaukan beat Oak Grove by 30 in the first game of the year, so there was that gauge of improvement.
“Just the way this team battled all year, from where we were when we got beat by 30,” Card said. “It’s a testament to our seniors and how hard they worked but we have a good group coming back.”
FW-M 19 36 47 60
Oak Grove 12 24 34 50
FW-M: Deng 22, Dubois 5, Black Jr. 2, Alberts 4, Delorme 7, Jackson Jr. 9, Lohnes 9.
OAK GROVE: Saunders 19, Koenig 6, Thomsen 2, Olson 8, Meidinger 4, Soper 11.
Anna Paige / The Forum
The season isn’t over yet for Wahpeton, who put the clamps on the Spoilers with a relentless defensive effort in the second Division A play-in game of the day. The Huskies advance to next week’s state tournament at the Fargodome holding Grafton to a season low in points.
“That says a lot of how we like to guard,” said Wahpeton head coach Jeff Ralph. “We don’t always guard that way but tonight we did.
Wahpeton won 13 of 15 heading into the game including defeating Valley City in the Region 1 third place game to reach the play-in game against the Spoilers, the Region 2 runnerup.
A 20-point second quarter boosted the Huskies to a 31-18 halftime lead with the trio of Brayden Steffens, Cooper Koolmo and Jack Gilbertson with eight points each.
A Steffens 3-pointer halfway through the third quarter made it an 18-point Huskies lead. The 6-foot- senior guard led the way with 19 points.
At one point 5-4 and not much going right, Wahpeton heads back to state where it was last year with momentum with a 19-6 record.
“We couldn’t make a basket, we couldn’t make a free throw and we really didn’t guard or rebound for a while in the beginning of January,” Ralph said. “But we got all that stuff fixed.”
Wahpeton 11 31 45 61
Grafton 6 18 30 43
Anna Paige / The Forum
Jeff Kolpack, the son of a reporter and an English teacher, and the brother of a reporter, worked at the Jamestown Sun, Bismarck Tribune and since 1990 The Forum, where he’s covered North Dakota State athletics since 1995. He has covered all 10 of NDSU’s Division I FCS national football titles and has written four books: “Horns Up,” “North Dakota Tough,” “Covid Kids” and “They Caught Them Sleeping: How Dot Reinvented the Pretzel.” He is also the radio host of “The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack” April through August.