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After cruising for the first 23 minutes of a 32 minute game, Chisago Lakes had to battle off a resilient Hermantown team late.

But, the Wildcats held on and in doing so, secured their first state tournament berth since 1997 and only their third overall. The other state tournament appearance came in 1983.

The Wildcats used their marked size advantage to build an early first half lead. Ethan Hickcox carried the offensive load, scoring most of his team-high 21 points in the opening stanza.

The favored Wildcats, who haven’t lost since early January, went into the locker room with a 31-22 lead and things were looking good for them.

Early in the second half, the lead ballooned to 14 points and it seemed that Chisago Lakes was going to run away with the game, much like they did earlier in the season.

But the Hawks have been to three straight section finals, and they don’t panic.

With around 10 minutes left in the game, their star duo of Thomas Madison and Nate Soumis unleashed a flurry of three pointers that chopped the once luxurious lead all the way down to one point with over six minutes left in the contest.

The ‘Cats also don’t panic. This was their second straight section championship game, and they went down a similar path last year before eventually losing. The sting of that loss was clearly in the head of some of the CL veterans and Dylan Wood in particular. The senior product, as well as fellow big Carter Duncan, had been mostly quiet on the night. That flew in the face of what the Wildcats had done all year and what they were expected to do against an undersized Hermantown team. So Wood took it upon himself to correct that.

He scored 15 points, all in the second half, and most of them down the stretch for Chisago Lakes as they began to put space between themselves and Hermantown again.

The key down the stretch for Wood and the rest of Chisago Lakes was getting to the free throw line. The ‘Cats were nowhere near as efficient as Hermantown from the charity stripe, but their sheer volume made up for that. Chisago Lakes was 17-of-26 while Hermantown was 12-of-14

The win sent the mostly-pro Chisago Lakes crowd into a frenzy as the students eventually stormed the court to surround their classmates in celebration. After the chaos cleared, the Wildcats got to make the climb they had expected to make last year up the ladder to cut the nets down.

The win sent the Wildcats to the state tournament and a first round match up with familiar foe Monticello. They dropped the game 60-55 to the Magic. For a full recap of the first round game, check out next week's Chisago County Press print edition.

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