Step III: all kinds of happy with another "W"!

The players hugged, smiled and jumped for joy as the final buzzer sounded at NL-S high school.

LOTS of happy after the win!

What a crazy second half!!! Final: B-B-E 52, Kimball 48. For just the fourth time in 27 years of B-B-E girls' basketball history, the Jaguars are sub-section champions! It's been 10 years since that last happened. The drought is over! This year's team joins the 1993, 1995 and 2005 squads as the only sub-section champion girls' basketball teams at B-B-E.

"We knew we had to win the rebounding battle tonight. We were undersized but we had to box out and play hard the whole way. Our goal was to get to the section finals, and the girls are very hungry for another win," said Coach Anderson after the game.

In fact Kimball Area won the rebounding battle by a slim 30-28 margin. The Jaguars will certainly have to win that category if they want a shot at getting their 22nd win of the season.

This game was beyond wild. Up 48-42, the Jaguars fell into a lull in the final three minutes. With 100 seconds to go, the Cubs got a layup, then 15 seconds later they got a steal on the press and a layup to make it 48-46. With 44 seconds left, Kimball's Taylor Schreiner tied the game with two bonus free throws.

At the 8:08 mark, the Jaguars had a 40-31 lead, but in a defensive struggle like it was, no lead felt comfortable.

How did the final 30 seconds go down? Who hit the game-winning shot? Read all about it in this week's Bonanza Valley Voice that prints just 12 hours from now. It hits newsstands at noon on Wednesday at Roosters Bottle Shop, Mike's Market and RJs.

While I certainly want you to subscribe to the newspaper, and I do hope you do, I can't help but post this video from the final moments of the game. It was a wild one. The Jaguars persevered under extreme pressure and got to 21 wins for the first time ever!


Here's the link to follow to subscribe to the Bonanza Valley Voice: http://lifeinbonanzavalley.blogspot.com/2015/01/online-payment-for-subscriptions.html

Up next: the Section 5A championship game in Alexandria at 7 p.m. on Friday against once-beaten and heavily-favored Browerville! The game will be in the brand-new Alexandria Area high school on the southeast side of town (east of Menards). The Tigers are 27-1 overall.

Have to give a huge shout out and a "tip of the hat" to the Kimball team and coaches. They were a very worthy contender and played a fantastic game while coming up just short. They played the game the right way: hard-nosed defense, clean fouls and great teamwork. It was a far cry from the first meeting they had with B-B-E on December 19 when they suffered 35 turnovers in a 50-29 loss.

Area girls' basketball playoff scores on March 10:
Sauk Centre 54, Osakis 35
New London-Spicer 59, Litchfield 48
Browerville 82, Sebeka 55 (Trojans finish 22-7)
Brandon/Evansville 51, Wheaton/Herman-Norcross 49 OT (wow! second time this season that the meeting between these teams went to overtime; this time was for a sub-section crown, and this time B/E avenged a 52-50 loss in Wheaton on Jan. 22)