We wrote last week that Providence can be fairly described as Minnesota’s best girls high school basketball team until somebody from Minnesota beats them. Last week they beat West Des Moines (IA) Dowling Catholic, Caitlin Clark’s alma mater, by 3 at St. Thomas. The following night, Dowling beat #1AAAA Hopkins. Well, now Providence took on one of the Wisconsin’s top teams, Hortonville, in a game that matched Minnesota’s #1 sophomore, Maddyn Greenway of Providence, against Wisconsin’s #1 junior, Rainey Welson. Neither they nor their teams disappointed. Providence took the lead for good at 51-48 at 14 minutes and led by as many as 10 at 61-51 at 12 minutes and 86-76 at 4 minutes. But, bottom line, it was like a heavyweight fight, with both teams launching haymaker after haymaker and just about every player on both teams having to scrape themselves up off the floor at one time or another to shake it off and to just keep on going.
Like their teams, Greenway and Welson more than justified their lofty rankings. Greenway scored 43 points on what I charted as 14-of-25 shooting, 13-of-19 2s and 1-of-6 3s, plus 14-of-14 FT. Still, most of her points came on hell-bent rushes to the basket, often eluding 3 defenders on the way. There is just no defending, as far as I have ever seen, Maddyn Greenway on her way to the rim. More than once, two or three Horntonville defenders thought they had the way to the rim blocked but, no, it turned out that it can’t be done. Of course, her hell-bent style resulted in 8 turnovers but on balance it is obviously worth it. Meanwhile, Welson scored 41 points on what, again, I charted as 13-of-26 shooting. Unlike Greenway, Welson is a little more of a shooter, and her 13 buckets included 6-of-14 3s along with 7-of-12 2s, plus 9-of-10 FT. Welson is bigger, Greenway is quicker but, please, can I not have both of them on my team? Oh, and Welson added 4 boards and 3 steals. She had 3 turnovers.
Like Greenway, fellow guards Brooke Hohenecker, a 5-7 senior who is headed to St. Thomas as a trackster; 5-10 9th grader Emma Millerbernd; and 5-7 little sister Beckett Greenway, a 7th grader who cannot yet weigh 100 pounds; are all about quickness and toughness and tenacity and in-your-face defense, though it is true that 3-some also scored 27 points and all 3 made at least one 3. Then there’s 6-1 8th grade Ari Peterson, the daughter of former Viking running back Adrian, who scored 12 points along with 7 rebounds. The Greenways are of course the daughters of former Viking linebacker Chad Greenway, and the best desciption I can think of is that his daughters and some of their teammates play basketball like linebackers. Hortonville is one tough son-of-a-basketball team, but even they were taken aback once or twice by the ferocity of Providence’s physical play.
Along with Welson, Hortonville’s heart and soul is 5-9 freshman point guard Kardyn (Kallie) Peppler. She left the game for a minute or two about 7 minutes in after taking a blow to the facial area. She came right back, however, and I’m not sure she ever took a blow after that. She is one tough kid who finished with 15 points on 5-of-13 shooting including 1-of-2 3s. She added 5 rebounds and 2 steals with just 2 turnovers, which is amazing considering Providence’s relentless pressure and that Peppler must have had the ball in her hands for a good 10 minutes of game time, which is more than half the time that it was in Hortonville’s possession. Again, this freshman did all of that with Providence guards bumping her all over the court and doing their darned-est to pick her pocket at all times. Of all the outstanding guards I saw yesterday, I’m not sure Peppler isn’t #4 after Greenway, Welson and Liv McGill but ahead of Oehrlein, Amelotte, Addi Mack and Aneisha Scott.
In any event, there were 20 lead changes in the 1st half. At one time 10 straight scores resulted in a lead change, and 5 of the last 6 scores of the 1st half represented a lead change. Of those 20 lead changes, 6 of them came on a Rainey Welson bucket, 3 on FG by Maddyn Greenway, and 2 each by Ari Peterson and Hallie Peppler.
40 years ago they said that Houston and its “Phi Slamma Jamma” represented “the future of basketball.” Well, here we are 40 years later, and the Providence girls are now the best case I can make that we have indeed arrived in some kind of “future of basketball,” which is to say that, yes, it is played at the fastest pace ever, but that it also resembles football as much as it resembles basketball like they played it back in the day.