ELY — On Monday at Memorial High School in Ely, the North Woods Grizzlies boys didn’t care that their 2-10 record looked weak against the Wolves’ 10-4 record. They didn’t care that Ely has topped 90 points in a game five times this season, or that Ely has averaged nearly 20 more points a game than they have. And they didn’t care that they were down by 15 points with nine minutes to play.
All the Grizzlies cared about was winning, and they pushed the heavily favored Wolves to the limit, roaring back to within two before Ely finally put the visitors away 70-62.
It looked like business as usual for Ely as Drew Johnson got the Wolves off to a good start with a pair of charities and a trey for a 5-0 lead, but Caleb Rutchasky got North Woods on the board with a bucket and one. Rutchasky followed that with a press-break lay-in to knot the score 5-5. After another Johnson free throw, Cedar Holman scored to give the Grizzlies their first lead of the game, 7-6. A trey by Elias Sheffer and two free throws put North Woods up by six, and a jumper from just inside the arc by Andrew Hartway doubled up the lead again at 14-7, forcing an Ely time out.
For the next nine minutes, every time the Wolves tried to claw their way back, the Grizzlies had an answer. A triple by TaySean Boshey-Wilkerson and a deuce by Elwood Spears gave North Woods its largest lead of the game at 27-19, but that appeared to be the wake-up call the Wolves needed. Locking down on defense, the Wolves rode a trey by Jack Davies, baskets by Johnson and Wyatt Tedrick, and two free throws by Davies to a 28-27 lead with 32 seconds remaining in the half. Rutchasky responded with a bucket and one, and the Grizzlies were poised to take a lead into the locker room when Davies nailed a buzzer-beating triple to give Ely a 31-30 edge at the break.
The score was tied at 36-36 when Leo McKrahl scored for Ely and set in motion what looked to be a knockout blow, as the Wolves put together a 16-1 run that included a pair of treys by Davies, and triples from Johnson and Tedrick. With a seemingly comfortable 52-37 lead on their home court, Ely fans breathed a collective sigh of relief.
But fresh off a game in which they cut a 26-point deficit to ten before succumbing, the Grizzlies weren’t about to go away quietly. An improbable 18-5 run with double triples by Sheffer and Boshey-Wilkerson slashed the lead to just two at 57-55 with 3:35 to play.
But the magic ran out before North Woods could complete the comeback, with Arturo Cameron hitting a basket and Johnson dropping in a big trey to put Ely back up 62-55. A pair of free throws by Tedrick put the Wolves up by nine, 64-57, with 45 seconds remaining, and four Johnson charities closed out the 70-62 Ely win.
Johnson led the Wolves with 28 points, 11 of those coming from the free throw line. Davies scored 15, and Tedrick dropped in 11.
For the Grizzlies, Sheffer topped the chart with 19, followed by Boshey-Wilkerson with 12 and Rutchasky and Holman with ten each.
“It was a great game,” Grizzlies Head Coach Jessica Trunnell said. “Our game plan was to take away as much of their three-point shooting as we could. We played really close defense on those perimeter players so that we could take those away. We didn’t come out with a win, but we did a really nice job on our game plan.”
Ely Head Coach Tom McDonald praised the Grizzlies’ effort.
“You know, sometimes we look at the (past) game scores and we think they must not be very good, and then they stick it to us and get confidence and now we’ve got ourselves a ball game,” McDonald said. “Credit to them, because I thought they outhustled us and outplayed us for most of the night.”