MONROE — A slow start vanished in the blink of an eye, as the Cheesemakers balanced a strong defensive showing with timely baskets en route to a 54-45 win over Portage in the Badger West championship game Feb. 25.
The score is also a bit deceiving, Monroe held a comfortable 25-point lead with just over three minutes to play, calling off the dogs and putting in its reserves and junior varsity players. Portage sophomore took advantage and hit three 3s and scored 11 of the Warriors’ 16 points over the final 3:08 of the game to make the final score seem like a closer contest than the game truly was.
The conference championship is Monroe’s first since 2011, when senior Carson Leuzinger was in first grade.
Two years ago, Monroe finished one game out of first place, and last year’s team, which had just one loss in the regular season, would have likely contended for a Badger South title, but the conference did not hold an official season due to various COVID-19 restrictions that made it difficult for many of the teams in the conference to have a full season.
This year, Monroe (19-5, 12-3) won the Badger West-South Division title, beating Oregon (20-4, 10-4) by a game. Portage (11-12, 6-9) won the North Division to reach championship game. Just two weeks earlier, the Warriors stunned the then-ranked Cheesemakers 64-62 in Portage.
“It means everything to me. For four years me and JT have been trying to get this program a conference championship. This is my last year, and I knew I had to give it everything. I knew I was not going to lose this game. I couldn’t let us lose this game,” Leuzinger said.
In the championship, Portage jumped out to a 13-4 advantage six minutes into the game. Bassett called one timeout, but felt it had little impact. Instead of calling a second early timeout, he let his lineup figure it all out themselves.
“That first 3 or 4 or 5 minutes felt like a lifetime,” said Monroe head coach Brian Bassett said. “It felt like the last five or six games where we couldn’t get into a rhythm and find each other — trust each other. We didn’t listen to our game plan at all. I called one timeout, screamed, and it didn’t really do much. Then all of a sudden, we got a really easy basket that sparked it and we finally got into a rhythm. We got loose and shared the ball after that.”
Tucker Markham scored on a basket in the paint at the 10:31 mark of the opening stanza, which keyed a 23-5 run that closed out the half.
“I feel like basketball is a game of runs — they made their run early when our shots weren’t falling,” Leuzinger said. “But then we started attacking and stopped settling. Once you see the ball go through the hoop, that’s when all the shots go in. We went on our run and never looked back.”
Senior big man JT Seagreaves scored a seven of nine points during the stretch, hitting a 3-pointer and a mid-range jumper, and another hoop on a baseline drive. Then Leuzinger got hot, hitting four jumpers in a row from midrange before finding Seagreaves in the paint for a bucket with 2:25 to go before half, giving his team a 25-15 lead. After a Kyan Reichhoff 3 for Portage with 47 seconds left, Leuzinger hit a pullup jumper from the elbow with six seconds left to make it 27-18 going into the break.
“My first few shots from deep didn’t drop, but then my mid-range game is something I can always rely on. I’m super confident right there, from 10-15 feet away. I got going from that range and it just helped me throughout the rest of the game,” Leuzinger said.
Not only did the scoring pick up in a hurry, but the defense locked down. Portage scored zero transition points over the final 12 minutes of the half, and the Cheesemakers routinely got deflections, steals and rebounds on the defensive end.
“I thought our defense was probably the best it’s been in a month, and that’s why we were able to contain them,” Bassett said. “I thought Aaron Roidt had a great game. He made so many hustle plays — especially early when we were struggling, he got a hustle rebound and put it back up. That was huge. That was a big play in the game because we didn’t have anything going.
“We knew with Portage, once one shot goes down, they are going to get hot. We had to just keep hands in their faces. One of the things we’d had issues with the last couple of games was effort, and tonight the effort was there all night — you could not fault any effort on anybody. It was great.”
Monroe did not let up in the second half, as Leuzinger and Seagreaves combined for six points out of the gate on three baskets to go up 15. After Cooper Roberts hit a jumper for Portage, Markham and Seagreaves buried back-to-back 3s just 30 seconds apart, forcing Portage to use its second timeout of the half and fourth of the game with 13:54 left and a 19-point deficit.
“Our biggest goal was to put them away and not let it be a game,” Leuzinger said of the first three minutes of the second half. “That’s what we did.”
The Cheesemakers kept up the barrage, and eventually led 54-29 with 3:26 after Markham found Leuzinger for one final 3. Both squads subbed in their reserves shortly after, with Hooker’s late Reggie Miller-like streak making the final deficit modest. Hooker led his team in scoring with 11 points. The Warriors were just 7-for-35 (20%) from beyond the arc, with four of those makes coming in the final three minutes.
Leuzinger’s 22 paced the Cheesemakers, with Seagreaves scoring 17 points and grabbing nine rebounds, Markham seven, Aaron Roidt six and James Seagreaves 2. Monroe shot just five free throws total, hitting just two. However, the Cheesemakers had 17 2-point baskets and six 3s. Portage made seven 3s and was 4-for-6 from the line.
“We looked loose and we shared the ball better than we have the last five or six games,” said Bassett, whose team had gone just 2-3 in its last five games after a 17-2 start to the season. “I think that was the key — we got each other easy shots for the first time in six games. Carson made some hard ones, but for the most part they were good looks.”
Monroe has a first-round bye in the WIAA Division 2 playoffs, and will host the winner of Baraboo (5-18) and Sauk Prairie (11-13) on March 4. The winner will get either 2-seed Oregon, 7-seed Portage or No. 10 seed Monroe Grove (5-19).
