Boys basketball: Ranked Irish climb to 8-2 with OT victory

• Boys basketball

The Irish boys have climbed to No. 10 in the latest rankings.

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The Rosemount boys basketball team is quickly proving it can play with the best teams in the state.

The Irish also have shown they need to bring a complete effort each night to beat the quality teams of the Lake Conference.

After beating top-10 Eagan last week, Rosemount suffered a disappointing 70-58 loss at Chaska. The Irish then put on a clamp-down defensive performance against Northfield in a 51-33 win a day later.

On Tuesday, Rosemount — which has climbed into the rankings at No. 10 — beat No. 9 Apple Valley 76-71 in overtime.

“It was a hard-fought game, a great high school basketball game,” Irish coach Bryan Schnettler said. “It was a physical game and we came out on top. It still wasn’t our best game, but I’ll take a win against a quality opponent any time.”

The win keeps Rosemount (8-2, 5-2 Lake) near the top of the conference standings. Eden Prairie’s 7-0 record in the Lake leads the way, but the Irish have established themselves in second place.

“It was a big win for us against a section, conference and district team,” Schnettler said. “We have another big game coming up.”

Rosemount pushed the game into overtime on a tip-in by Matt Nelson. The Irish then took control in overtime, including a reverse lay-up by Ben Danielson.

“In that situation you’re happy to get into overtime,” Schnettler said. “We did what we needed to do to finish the game. We can still improve on things.”

The Irish got a spark from three sophomores. Matt Larson scored 16 points. Nelson had 15 points and 10 rebounds. Brandon Forcier had four points and provided a first-half spark.

“We had three sophomores step up big time for us,” Schnettler said. “To get 35 points off the bench from sophomores is unbelievable. That helped a lot.”

Toriano Tatum added 16 points.

Zach Vraa scored 16 in the win against Northfield. The Irish held Northfield to just 14 points in the second half.

Vraa added 29 points in last week’s loss to Chaska.

“It was really the first game we didn’t shoot that well and it affected some of the guys,” Schnettler said. “We didn’t play as well as we’re capable of playing.”

Tags: prep sports, boys basketball, sports, rosemount