Photo by the West Central Tribune/Michael Lyne: Dawson-Boyd sophomore guard Jaxton Hastad looks to make a pass while defended by Heritage Christian Academy's Griffin Booms in a Class A state quarterfinal game on Thursday, March 20, 2025, at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

MINNEAPOLIS — The second-seeded Dawson-Boyd boys basketball team found a new level in the second half of its Class A quarterfinal matchup against No. 7 Heritage Christian Academy on Thursday at the Target Center. The Blackjacks held a 6-point lead at halftime but ran away with the win in the second half, riding a scoring barrage from Brayson Boike and Gunner Liebl to a 69-46 win.

“Offensively, we didn’t need to really change anything. We settled for some 3-point shots, they don’t go in, so maybe the offense doesn’t look too good,” Dawson-Boyd head coach Cory Larson said of the team’s halftime conversation. “Offensively, we wanted to attack them a little bit more and get Gunner going… The message was get aggressive, play a little bit more north-and-south offensively, and we were able to get to the rim a few more times in the second half.”

Holding a 34-28 lead out of halftime, Dawson-Boyd wasted no time flipping the switch. Liebl scored Dawson-Boyd’s first 6 second-half points to extend the advantage to 40-29. After a Carson Stratmoen putback layup, Liebl assisted a Boike basket inside and then hit another basket for his 8th point of the half on a 12-1 Dawson-Boyd run when Heritage Christian called a timeout.

After scoring 2 points on 1 of 7 shooting in the first half, Liebl went on to finish the game with a total of 18 points after shooting 6 of 9 after the break. He also grabbed five rebounds and dished out five assists with four turnovers.

Dawson-Boyd’s lead only continued to balloon from there. Boike converted an and-1 to bring the Blackjacks’ lead to 25 points with seven-and-a-half minutes left in the game. A Liebl eurostep extended the lead to 20 with four minutes left to play, and an emphatic dunk and a pair of free throws brought the Blackjack advantage up to its apex, 69-45, when both teams made a mass substitution with 90 seconds to play.

Boike made a statement in his first game on the big stage. He scored a game-high 31 points on 11 of 18 shooting from the field. He also grabbed eight rebounds, blocked three shots and ripped away a pair of steals.

“The thing about Brayson right now is that obviously everybody understands he’s talented, but he’s playing with a lot of determination. A lot of desire,” Larson said. “That’s a great characteristic to have when you’re playing late in March. He’s impacting the game in a lot of different ways. Defensively today, I mean, he had a big block in the second half, but he was very efficient on the offensive end too.”

Both Dawson-Boyd and Heritage Christian Academy were making their third-ever state tournament appearance in the matchup. For the Eagles, the tournament berth marked their second consecutive season qualifying for state after they went home with a fifth-place trophy last year. For the Blackjacks, it was their first appearance since 1991. Their lone other appearance came as Dawson High School in 1949.

The Blackjacks first pulled away while facing a 7-6 deficit. Boike finished through contact to give Dawson-Boyd the lead and then slammed home a dunk off a feed from Drew Hjelmeland to extend the advantage to 3 points.

Hjelmeland then came up with a steal to set up a Liebl bucket and, after Heritage Christian called its first timeout five minutes in, he hit another 3 to give Dawson-Boyd a 17-7 lead on a 10-0 run.

Heritage Christian battled its way back down to a 4-point deficit when Owen Haag knocked down a 3-pointer, making the score 27-23 with five minutes remaining in the half. A traveling violation against the Blackjacks gave the Eagles the opportunity to make it a one-possession game. Still, Heritage Christian shot an airball and Hjelmeland got a floater and a putback to go down on consecutive possessions to bring the Blackjacks back out of the danger zone.

Dawson-Boyd got in foul trouble early. The Eagles entered the bonus with nine minutes left in the half and entered the double bonus in the final two minutes. Jaxton Hastad was called for three first-half fouls, and another in the opening minutes of the second half, but Heritage Christian struggled at the charity stripe; they shot 3 of 8 as a team from the line in the half.

“It’s easy for us, as a coaching staff, to say, ‘Hey, play straight up. You know the first move he’s going to give you is a shot fake to try to create some sort of advantage,’ but we’re not the ones that are out on the court,” Larson said. “I thought we did a pretty good job of just playing ourselves in the second half, but at the same time, staying aggressive.”

While University of Minnesota-commit Abu Tarawallie was able to have his way in the paint, logging 8 points and 11 rebounds at the break with four coming on the offensive glass, he shot 2 of 6 at the line. Tarawallie went on to finish the game with 19 rebounds and 13 points on 5 of 11 shooting from the field and 3 of 10 shooting from the free-throw line.

“He eats up so much space, he’s pretty active and he’s so strong,” Larson said of Tarawallie. “He’s got 80-to-90 pounds on most of our kids… He had a really nice first half and got us into foul trouble, but I thought kids did a good job of adjusting in the second half.”

Larson added that he felt the group was good defensively as a whole, noting that they only allowed 18 second-half points.

An acrobatic layup from Joshua Sokeye and another travel against Dawson-Boyd gave the Eagles another opportunity to make it a one-possession game in the final minute, but Beau Johnson ripped away a steal and Dawson-Boyd carried a 34-28 advantage into halftime.

In addition to Tarawallie, the Eagles also had Haag and Sokeye score in double figures for the Eagles with 11 and 10 points respectively. The Eagles are one of two teams in Minnesota state history with four career 1,000-point scorers in their career, per NSPN.TV, with Tarawallie, Sokeye, Jonah Moulton and Haag all in the club.

Both teams struggled with long-range shooting in the game; Dawson-Boyd shot 3 of 19 from beyond the arc while Heritage Christian shot 3 of 16. Still, Dawson-Boyd used its size down the stretch to create a 44-30 edge in points in the paint, and their defensive performance resulted in a 22-7 advantage in points off turnovers.

Dawson-Boyd improves to 28-3 with the win and will No. 3 Red Lake County (30-2) in the semifinals at the University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena on Thursday at 2 p.m. The Rebels defeated No. 6 Goodhue 68-61 on Thursday.