Madison Memorial beats Waunakee to get to state

In a sectional final match up the heavily favored Madison Memorial Spartans took on the Waunakee Warriors, who had just recently beaten a Madison East squad that many people thought could challenge Memorial in getting to state. Madison Memorial is made up of the top senior, top junior, and top freshmen in the state, while Waunakee is made up of almost entirely seniors. Everyone thought that Memorial would win this game easily but, I could of easily seen Waunakee take down the Memorial team.

Early on Waunakee came out very strong and used physical play to keep the game close. The Warriors looked inside to their big man 6'4 senior Jason Paulson who was able to use his size and strength to score in the paint. The thing that doomed Waunakee was their inability to handled the Memorial trap. Waunakee turned the ball over numerous times leading to easy baskets for Memorial. Memorial freshmen 6'4 Junior Lomomba benefited greatly from these fast breaks which led to two big dunks out of the freshmen and the majority of his points in the first half.

The second half continued much the same as Memorial continued to get out an run on the turnovers. Waunakee was unable to continue to go to the inside because Paulson was saddled with foul trouble. It seemed like throughout the entire second half Memorial was scoring four points for every Waunakee two. Memorial 6'4 junior Vander Blue got things going in the first half getting out and running and finishing with some acrobatic lay ups. In the end Memorial cruised to the 20 point victory.

Top Players
Vander Blue 6'4 junior Madison Memorial- Knocking down a three early and was able to get out in transition and finish at the rim.
Junior Lomomba 6'4 freshmen Madison Memorial- Another guy that was running and was finishing at the rim strong.
Tre Creamer 6'4 junior Madison Memorial- Used his athleticism and length to take the ball to the rim and finish.
Eric Helt 6'2 senior Waunkaee- One of the players that benefited from the Memorial trap as he was able to find wide open shots on the baseline and he dropped them.
Jason Paulson 6'4 senior Waunakee- Very strong in the post that the Memorial defenders had a very tough time stopping.

Box Score
Madison Memorial 72- Blue 21 Creamer 13 Lomomba 13 Jeronne Maymon 10 Xavier Jones 9 Russell Henderson 5 Eric Fruhling 2 Fred Ringhand 0 Erick Blue 0 Karl Klatt 0 Alvin Jones 0 Mathew Laubmeier 0 Ed Kluender 0
Waunakee 49- Helt 12 Paulson 11 Zach Ripley 11 Mitch Roelke 8 Austin Goetsch 0 Jeff Tagarelli 2 Ryan Gilles 0 Paul Fitzpatrick 0 Matt Gorman 0 Chris Braatz 0 Kyle Newhouse 0 Beau Murray 0 Jared Staege 0 Cole Cefalu 0 Austin Prusha 0

Right now Madison Memorial is playing some of their best basketball of the year and look destined to play either Racine Horlick or Milwaukee Washington in the state championship game. With all the athletes Memorial have they are a tough match up for any team in the state.