The Park Center boys basketball team won two home games last week to earn a spot in the upcoming Section 5AAAA final. With the No. 1 seed, Park Center will face No. 2 seed Maple Grove at 7 p.m. at Rogers High School for the right to go to the state tournament.
Mounds View
To qualify for the section final, Park Center got the job done again at home beating Mounds View 66-58 on March 8.
Mounds View, the tournament’s fourth seed, reached the semifinals by beating fifth seed Spring Lake Park 74-64 at home on March 6. The Mustangs earned an 18-8 regular season overall record and finished third in the Suburban East Conference, six points behind champions Cretin-Derham Hall.
Friday night’s win did not come easily. Mounds View led on and off for much of the opening minutes of the game. Park Center found its response with time, kicking into gear with two three-pointers and a dunk from Ari Gooch to take a lead. The surge found its way to Casmir Chavis, Aidan Memene, and Chiang Ring as well. Ring started the game after spending much of the last two months out of play with a leg injury.
Xavier Frelix had his turn toward the end of the first half, scoring two three-pointers to cancel out a strong late run from Mounds View as Park Center led 38-30 at halftime amid a very physical and high-energy game.
Chavis and Gooch were at the peak of their powers early in the second half as Park Center took a stronger lead, helped by multiple blocks from Ring.
Mounds View closed the gap as Park Center hit a scoring drought from late in the half, scoring just two points in four minutes between two timeouts in the 11th and 15th minutes. At one point the Mustangs sat just five points behind the Pirates. Park Center eventually found its rhythm and made the most of free throw opportunities to win 66-58.
Chavis led Park Center on points with 22 against Mounds View. Gooch put up 17 points in the section semifinal, while Aiden Memene and Xavier Frelix added nine and eight respectively.
Park Center boys basketball head coach James Ware noted after the Mounds View win that the team is maintaining a win-in-the-present mentality. He also noted the impact that Park Center Activities Administrative Assistant Carmen Middleton has had on the team’s approach.
“We talk about treating every practice and every game like it’s the championship. That’s helped us,” he said. “In terms of the anxieties and anxiousness that comes with each game, [Middleton] has been working with our team all year on mindfulness. We’ve worked on being able to stop, pause, set our feet on the ground before we come out to warm up or play. That’s been a big help for our guys.”
Ware added that the task of keeping the team at their best ahead of next week’s game has been a challenging one with several major injuries to contend with. Ware says the group has powered through those obstacles so far.
“We’ve had a lot of guys with injuries, so it’s about trying to get everybody aimed at playing their best basketball. It’s hard,” Ware said. “Chiang Ring has played two games in the last two months. We had Jackson Fowlkes out so we needed other guys to step in. I’m super proud of how these guys responded.”
Irondale
First-seed Park Center opened the Section 5AAA tournament week with a 100-44 win over eighth-seed Irondale in the first round on March 6 at home.
Irondale faced a tough year in Suburban East Conference play this year, finishing bottom with a 1-17 record. The team went 3-23 overall, earning their final regular season win on Feb. 21, beating Roseville 77-69.
The result moved Park Center onward to the semifinals, against Mounds View at home, two days later.
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