Photo by Travis Rosenau: Wabasso's Brayden Guetter goes up with a shot during the Tomahawk/Valley Conference Championship game against Nicollet, Tuesday in Wabasso.

WABASSO — The Wabasso Rabbits wanted to make a statement on Tuesday that they deserved to be at the top of the Tomahawk-Valley Conference.

They made that statement in a big way at the expense of a tough Nicollet Raiders team as the Rabbits racked up a season high in points scored with a 113-86 win in the Tomahawk-Valley Conference boys basketball title game.

Brayden Guetter led the attack for the Rabbits (24-3) with a game-high 40 points, seven rebounds, five assists and five steals.

“Just wanting to make history,” Guetter said of his performance. “This is a great team and we’ve worked together all year, so to get this far, might as well make a statement coming into the [Section 3A] tournament on Saturday. Make everyone double-take a little bit.”

Drew Kemp poured in 31 points and added six assists and five rebounds also for the Rabbits, while Caden Frericks did a bit of everything with 16 points, 15 rebounds, eight assists and five steals.

Tuesday’s double-double saw the 6-2 Frericks successfully finish the regular season with a double-double in all 27 games played.

While points are fun to score, Frericks said being able to lead his team on the boards has meant a lot to him.

“It’s really special to me, because if we don’t have the ball, we can’t score, we can’t do anything,” Frericks said. “We need the rebounders out so we can get the ball in and score.”

Jack Burns added 7 points and four assists for the Rabbits.

The Raiders (21-6) were led by Carson Kettner and Henry Kennedy’s 24 points, while Keegan Hulke dropped in 17 points.

The Raiders had to play catchup early on as the Rabbits got out and running. After a Guetter 3 and back-to-back layups by Kemp, the Rabbits were up double digits, 12-2.

The Rabbits started turning turnovers into points, with a turnover leading to a fast-break, two-handed slam dunk by Jayden Remiger and 26-13 lead. An 8-0 run had the Rabbits up 38-18 and another Nicollet turnover minutes later turned into a slam dunk by Guetter and 51-21 Rabbits lead.

A 3 by Kemp had the Rabbits up 52-38, but the Raiders were finally able to get something to go their way, ending the half on a 13-0 run to trail 58-36 at halftime. The run saw a pair of 3s by Keegan Hulke and 7 points from Kettner.

“We came out in the first half with a lot of energy and in the second half we kind of expected them to die off and they didn’t really,” Guetter said. “We just had to maintain our lead instead of letting them claw back.”

Back-to-back buckets inside by Kennedy stretched the run to 17-0 for the Raiders to begin the second half. The Raiders hung in despite the big deficit and chiseled it down to 16, 74-58, after a 3 by Noah Fitzner. The Rabbits got their lead back up to 22, but Abe Madson and Keegan Hulke hit back-to-back 3s to have the Raiders down 15, 91-76.

Despite the second-half push, the Rabbits regrouped and got three consecutive buckets from Frericks, Tavyn Larson and Burns to cross the century mark and lead 103-80.

Despite the Raiders getting a nice run in the second half also, the Rabbits finally started getting out to the 3-point line and getting their fast-break offense going again.

“We just knew that we couldn’t let them shoot 3s,” Frericks said. “They’re good at shooting 3s, we just had to stop them at the 3-point line and make them drive it because we have big guys down low that can help stop their layups.”

A 3 by Tucker Larson gave the Rabbits their largest lead of the night, 113-83, in the closing minutes.

The Rabbits pushed the tempo early and often to finish with a season high in points, but the 86 points given up also tied their season-high total in points allowed, giving the Raiders a bit of a moral victory against a team that has routinely routed teams while keeping points against them down.

The Rabbits entered Tuesday’s game allowing just 59.4 points per game against them, with their first game of the year seeing them allow 86 points to Renville County West in a 95-86 win in Wabasso.

Wabasso begins Section 3A playoffs on Saturday as the No. 3 seed in the north taking on No. 6 Montevideo, while the Raiders await the winner of Friday’s Section 2A playoff opener between No. 12 New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva and No. 21 Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart. The winner of that game will head to Nicollet for a 7 p.m. game on Tuesday.