Photo by Jake McNeill: Minneota senior captains (left to right) Kenadi Drake, Faith Myhre and Grace Hennen raise the Section 3A girls basketball runner-up trophy after falling to Southwest Minnesota Christian at Southwest Minnesota State University’s R/A facility on Friday night.

MARSHALL — It’s the end of an era for the Minneota girls basketball team. After another highly successful season, the Vikings fell just shy of their seventh consecutive section championship, losing 58-38 to Southwest Minnesota Christian in a battle of the top-seeded teams on either side of the Section 3A bracket.

“When you have these games, these pressure situations, seemingly every year, a lot of people think it’s just expected and it’s not easy,” Minneota head coach Alan Panka said. “It’s not a simple thing to get back here every year but the kids keep working and coming to practice. The kids keep doing their job every year. Yeah, it’s tough to lose. You never want to lose. But I couldn’t be more proud of them. They worked their butts off, just today, Southwest was the better team. They got us today and we wish them good luck in the state tournament.”

Minneota came into the game ranked No. 9 in Class A on a 13-game winning streak while Southwest was tabbed No. 10. The battle of two of the state’s top teams bookends Minneota’s six consecutive state tournament appearances with the Eagles entering the Class A bracket, as they were the last non-Minneota team to come out of 3A back in 2017.

Southwest Minnesota Christian held a 29-25 lead to start the second half but Minneota kept the game close for the first several minutes. Grace Hennen finished through contact to cut the Eagles’ lead to 3 points, 33-30. The two teams continued to trade blows until Ana Veldkamp came up with s steal and a transition layup to make the score 36-30, prompting a Minneota tieout five minutes into the half.

After a Kenadi Arndt putback layup, Veldkamp came up with another steal to set Makenzie Pap up with a layup. Jocelyn Barron then drew a foul, knocked down the first of two free throws, and Veldkamp got the offensive rebound on the second to set up a Hannah Caspersen 3-pointer. The shot extended the Eagles’ lead to 42-32 with 10:44 to play.

Barron kept the ball rolling with post shots in each of the next two Southwest possessions. After both teams went on a long drought, Madyson Fey hit a 3-pointer and Veldkamp knocked down another shot in close to give the Eagles a 51-35 lead with five minutes remaining. They never let the Vikings back into the game.

“It was just a slow bleed. Now it’s to 10, now it’s to 12, a couple minutes later it’s 14. We just couldn’t find a way to put the ball on the rim and they kept slowly adding on and eventually it’s that 16, 18, 20 number with two minutes to go,” Panka said. “At that point, you know it’s kind of pretty impossible to come back and got everybody in the game.”

Faith Myhre got Minneota out to a hot start, scoring each of Minneota’s first 9 points to pace the Vikings to a 9-5 lead after the first eight minutes of play. While she was finding a way to put points on the board, however, the rest of the team struggled to find its rhythm and couldn’t capitalize on Myhre’s early offense to seize momentum.

“She was getting open and was willing to take [shots]. She was firing them up and they’re going in,” Panka said of Myhre. “We never really have a problem with anybody shooting the ball. If you’re open, you need to shoot it because if we’re getting a good look, we need to take it and that’s what we preach. She was getting the looks right away, she was taking them and she was making them. After that, it kind of calmed down and we went into a little lull and didn’t shoot so well but that happens, credit to [Southwest Christian’s] defense.”

Myhre led Minneota with 11 points on the day, all of which came in the first half, while Kiersyn Hulzebos and Arndt added another 8 and 7 respectively.

Minneota’s interior defense, led by Kenadi Arndt, was very effective in its ability to limit Southwest’s forwards early in the game. Arndt made stop after stop in the post, whether it was getting a hand on the ball or standing tall and altering a shot. Still, while Arndt was the tallest player on the court at 6-foot-flat, Veldkamp, Fey and Pap are all 5-foot-10 and Barron is 5-foot-11, keeping the height advantage in Southwest’s favor.

Barron in particular wore on the Vikings as the game went on, scoring 19 points while Veldkamp added another 16. Barron also grabbed eight offensive rebounds and 22 total rebounds, pacing the Eagles to a 42-25 advantage over a normally strong rebounding Vikings group.

“They’re tough to defend. They’ve got a bunch of shooters and it’s hard to justify one way or the other, do you give up the open 3 or give up some of the inside scores?” Panka said. “Kenadi busted her butt playing defense on the inside against [Barron] and did the best she could. She’s just a tough presence in there.

“You pick your poison a little bit. We tried to gamble back and forth between leaving shooters and leaving [Barron] and they did a good job of getting the ball to her when she was open and she did a good job scoring.”

Arndt finished the game with a block and a steal — as well as a team-leading nine total rebounds and five offensive boards — though her defensive impact went beyond the box score. Grace and Dakoda Hennen finished with another five and two steals respectively to help the Vikings to a 22-23 advantage in the turnover battle. Barron, meanwhile, tallied three steals and a pair of blocks while Veldkamp finished with three steals.

Dakoda Hennen forced a defensive tie-up to set up a Myhre basket to give Minneota its largest lead of the day, 18-13, with under seven minutes remaining before halftime. Yet, the Eagles got to work quickly. Fey came back with a basket in the post on the opposite end, Barron absorbed contact and finished a fastbreak layup to bring the Eagles within a point and Veldkamp finally gave Southwest a 19-18 lead after capitalizing on a steal from Barron with under five minutes to play.

Hulzebos answered the Southwest run after the Vikings allied a timeout by knocking down a second-chance 3-pointer but Veldkamp again responded with a layup to tie up the game at 21 each. Hulzebos continued to cook after getting to the basket and getting undercut on a layup. She knocked down the free throw to extend the Vikings’ lead to 24-21.

Veldkamp again responded for Southwest with a layup. Arndt blocked the Eagles’ next shot but Barron was there for the offensive board and the go-ahead putback and Fey went under the Minneota defense to give the Eagles a 27-24 lead with 90 seconds remaining in the first half.

Friday’s game was the second game between the Vikings and Eagles this season. Southwest came to Minneota on Feb. 6. The then-unranked Vikings pulled out a 57-53 win over the No. 7 Eagle’s 11-game win streak. Hulzebos tied Fey with a game-high 21 points and logged 13 rebounds while Barron had another 14 points for SWMC in the loss. 

The Vikings graduate a large chunk of their core from this season. Myhre, Grace and Dakoda Hennen, Kenadi Arndt, Emma Bottelberghe and Brooke DeSmet are all graduating. The senior group accounted for four of Minneota’s five leading scorers — the exception being Hulzebos, a junior — and was responsible for more than two-thirds of the Vikings’ scoring and rebounding production this season.

“We’re going to miss them big time, but they’ve left their mark on the program just like all the other seniors in the past,” Panka said. “I told them in the locker room, I thanked them for all their years of hard work, being the great kids they are and working as hard as they did. And I told the underclassmen as well, we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of time to put in this summer to try to get back to this place. Hopefully, they’re up to that challenge to keep our program where we want to be.”

Minneota finishes its season at 27-4 while Southwest Christian enters the state tournament with a 28-2 record.