File photo by Steve Muscatello Sleepy Eye St. Marys’ Sydney Windschitl drives to the bucket during a home game with Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop on Jan. 21.

SLEEPY EYE — Boasting a perfect 14-0 record this season, Class A’s No. 3-seeded Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s girls’ basketball team has been one of the area’s premier teams.

The Knights will have their toughest challenge of the season so far this Friday night, however, when No. 9-seeded Waterville-Elysian-Morristown comes to Sleepy Eye. WEM is 11-2 this year and has a home game with Medford on Thursday before traveling to Sleepy Eye on Friday.

The Buccaneers defeated the Knights in last season’s Section 2A title game, and St. Mary’s would love to get a little redemption on Friday. The Knights have been nearly inexorable on offense this season, averaging 80.2 points per game and allowing 40.7 ppg. The Buccaneers are averaging 59.3 ppg and allowing 38.1 ppg.

“We lost to them in the section final last year, they have a lot of their kids back as well,” Knights head coach Bruce Woitas said. “They lost a few seniors, but they have a lot of their team from last year back. Great guard play, they shoot the ball extremely well — I think in that section game last year they made 14 3s on us. So if they shoot that way again, it’s going to be tough to beat them. But we’re looking forward to the matchup, it’s going to be kind of a measuring stick for us to see how we’ve come along playing a good team like that.”

St. Mary’s is led by last season’s Tomahawk Conference Player of the Year and All-Journal Player of the Year Madison Mathiowetz. Mathiowetz, a junior, is averaging 32.2 ppg, 11.2 rebounds per game, 5.5 assists per game and 5.2 steals per game.

Also leading the Knights this season is senior Sydney Windschitl. She is averaging 19.1 ppg, 5.8 rpg and 4.1 apg.

Windschitl said that she looks forward to playing WEM again and the challenge it will bring.

“They’re definitely our best game that we’re going to play and our best test so far,” Windschitl said. “We’re definitely going to have to play hard defense and stop their main scoring threats like Brielle [Bartelt] and Toryn Richards.”

Rounding out the starting five for the Knights this season are Reagan Severson (9.6 ppg), Katelyn Rutscher (4.2 ppg) and Sophie Portner (4.1 ppg).

The Knights’ strong success this season doesn’t come without their youth and coachability.

“We were excited about our group that was coming back,” Woitas said. “We didn’t have a senior from the previous year, so we were able to bring everybody back. And this team has a great passion for the game of basketball and they come to practice every day to get better and work hard. They’re very coachable, and it’s just been a really fun group to work with — and I think that’s probably been a bonus to the fact that we had everybody coming back, it was kind of set with things that we wanted to do, and we were able to advance things a little bit quicker, too. To be 14-0 at this time is just a credit to their desire to work hard in practice.”

Windschitl added that she’s happy that the team has been able to play this year and stay healthy.

“We’re all just thankful that we have the ability to play this season and that we have everybody back and we’re all healthy,” she said. “We’re playing well right now, but we definitely have room for improvement and are looking to play our best at the end of the season.”

If the Knights can take down WEM on Friday, it will surely give them added confidence as the regular season winds down and playoffs begin.

“We have a big game Friday, but we have three important conference games next week to finish off our conference,” Woitas said. “One of our goals was to repeat as conference champions, and to do that we need to be ready for those three games that we have the following week. But the matchup with Waterville, if we play well, we have the opportunity to beat them and that could mean a lot and we could potentially see them in the section championship once again.”

If St. Mary’s can beat WEM on Friday, it will have cross-town rival Sleepy Eye (March 8), Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart (March 12) and Cedar Mountain (March 13) standing in the way of a perfect regular-season record.

Windschitl said that heading into playoffs unbeaten and as repeat Tomahawk Conference champions would mean a lot to her. But like coach Woitas, Windschitl isn’t planning on overlooking anyone.

“That would mean everything, honestly,” Windschitl said. “We would have a lot of confidence heading into the playoffs. We can’t overlook anybody, but that would be a good start to playoffs for us.”