My primary assignment at yesterday’s Breakdown Tip-Off was to see the Gopher recruits–5-11 junior guard Tori Oehrlein of Crosby-Ironton and 5-9 sophomore guard Amisha Ramlall of Rosemount. Mission accomplished. They could not be more different. Oehrelein is a big, smooth guard except that she’s not just a guard. She’s a basketball player, and she plays everywhere and does everything. Ramlall is more of a classic small, scoring guard. She runs downhill and shoots the 3.
What makes Rosemount so impossibly exciting, however, is Ramlall times 3. That is Amisha and her sisters. Amisha, again, is the 5-9 sophomore and Gopher recruit. She score 29 points yesterday. Her sister Arshia is a 5-7 sophomore, and she scored 18. Their sister Ashna is a 5-9 freshman, and she added 14. That’s 61 of Rosemount’s 72 points. With the 3 sisters on the court, Rosemount was not going to lose this game. They led 62-51 with about 7 minutes left to play and 70-64 with 2 minutes remaining.
But, therein lies the rub. At the end, there were no sisters on the court and St. Michael-Albertville outscored Rosemount 12-2 down the stretch to get the win. The first sister, and that was #23 Ashna, the freshman, left the court with her 5th foul at 3:33 and the game tied at 64. Arshia quickly hit a 3 for a 67-64 Rosemount lead. But on the next possession the second sister, and this as the Gopher recruit, #2 Amisha, left the court with her 5th foul, this one of the offensive variety at 2:50. 6-0 senior forward Emma Theisen responded with an old-fashioned 3 point play to make it 70-64.
But the momentum had shifted. St. Michael clamped an aggressive full-court press on the Irish. I said that the only way Rosemount was going to get the ball over half-court was if St. Michael fouled them. In fact Rosemount couldn’t get the ball to the free throw line, much less half-court. The Knights grabbed 3 straight steals, 2 by Cali Jahnke and one by Kayli Bigalke, and scored on all 3. And on the 1st of the 3 steals the 3rd sister, the other sophomore Arshia, stuck her head in front of Juhnke’s knee and came up groggy and unable to continue. This was at :49 seconds, when even after Jahnke’s basket, Rosemount still led by one. But with no sisters available for Rosemount, the 2nd and 3rd of the 3 turnovers followed. Suddenly a 72-69 Rosemount lead had turned into a 75-72 lead for St. Michael. The final was 76-72.
Ok, so I made this a story all about Amisha Ramlall. But let’s be clear. St. Michael’s Jahnke, a 6-2 junior, was every bit as good as Amisha. Here are their lines.
Amisha Ramlall 29 points 12-of-23 5-of-9 3s 3-for-3 FT 5 reb 4 asts 2 stl 1 blk 9 turnovers
Cali Juhnke 29 points 9-of-19 1-of-4 3s 10-of-12 FT 7 reb 6 stl 1 blk 4 turnovers
I have seen Rosemount rated #9 and #10 in 2 different pre-season rankings. With the 3 sisters on the floor, they are scarey good. But the sisters may have to cool their jets at least enough that they stay on the floor. Eastview will be their primary competition in Section 3, and Eastview did not look like a state tournament team against Wayzata yesterday, losing 64-33. But Rosemount didn’t look like a state tournament team whenever it had anything less than 2 sisters out there.
Meanwhile, St. Michael was rated #4 and #8. They’re an interesting team with a load of potential. But they seem kind of lopsided. They’re playing their 2 “bigs,” the 6-2 Jahnke and 6-0 senior Abby Hoselton, an erstwhile power forward, at the guard spots. They’re big and powerful and, oh, yeah, they are St. Michael’s most skilled players. So they play up top and trigger both the offense and the defense from the perimeter. Hopefully 6-3 sophomore post Mariah Sexton is going to provide some size and strength inside. That’s the plan. But coach Kent Hamre told me that Sexton, a transfer from somewhere in Wisconsin, who is highly regarded, has been ill, and she definitely looked like somebody who was running on empty last night.
So the scoring support behind Jahnke’s big 29 points came from 5-8 senior guard Ella Erickson who scored an efficient 14 points on just 7 shots, and also from another 5-8 senior guard Kali Merfeld and 5-8 freshman guard Caelyn Foster. Each scored just 5 points but together they were also quite efficient at 5-for-9. St. Michael shot just 8-of-27 in the 1st half, but 17-of-28 in the 2nd for an overall efficient total of 25-of-55. There is almost no doubt that St. Michael will be a state tournament team this year. And with several of the state’s top 10 teams clustered in Sections 2 and 6, they’ll probably be a top 4 seed even if they’re rated as low as 6 or 7 in the rankings. If I were an opposing coach, I wouldn’t be too thrilled about getting to a state semi-final and then seeing Cali Jahnke and Abby Hoselton down on the other end.
