“It’s surreal,” BLHS’s Kristi Kottke said. “Because I’ve worked for this moment since I was an eighth-grader. We had the right people to get here, but it just hasn’t been our year for every single year. Seeing the seeds be planted [in this team] and grow over the years. It’s really cool now seeing that come to fruition my senior year and we can reap the harvests of all our hard work, and it’s really fun to do it with your best friends too.”

Buffalo Lake-Hector advanced to the state tournament once back in 2010. The Mustangs won at least one playoff game in each of the four years prior to this year, but they were unable to advance past the section finals.

Until now.

“It’s been an amazing feeling, because we’ve been in several subsection games over the course of my years here,” BLHS head coach Jesse Weick said. “And to be finally able to punch that ticket with this group of girls has just been a rewarding feeling overall. It’s still surreal, it hasn’t hit yet, because normally we’ve been on the other side of every single one of these games in the past five years.”

Staff photo by Ari Selvey Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart’s Rachel Kottke drives to the basket while guarded by Springfield’s Emma Hauger during the Section 2A Girls Basketball Tournament Finals game Friday at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

The Mustangs had a strong offensive output at all three levels, finding success from behind the arc, at the rim and in the midrange. BLHS was led by Lily Hubin with 26 points, while Kristi Kottke had 25 points and Rachel Kottke had 21 points.

“We didn’t shoot the best right away, probably just not being on our home court,” Kristi Kottke said. “The other team did, but our offense comes, and we pride ourselves with playing defense first. And when we really work hard on defense, our offense comes. Tonight in transition especially we got some good looks, because we can run on any team we play, because that’s our style. When we started attacking with layups, getting our confidence up off of those layups, then we can hit those outside shots, and that’s something we need to be doing every game.”

Brooklyn Sturm led the Tigers with 22 points, while Emma Hauger had 11 points and Marissa Pabst had 10 points.

Springfield head coach Mike Kelly said the Mustangs brought a complete team to the court every night with everything they needed to win a game.

“They’re just absolutely relentless,” Kelly said. “From the opening tip to the last few minutes of the game, they’re still diving on the floor, they’re in your face, they double team a lot. After a while it wears you down and you make a few too many mistakes, and they usually capitalize on your mistakes.

“That’s what makes them effective. Those girls can shoot from the outside, you come out and guard them on the outside, they drive right by you. They’ve got the complete package, and they can do very well here at the state tournament.”

Despite the slow shooting start, BLHS’s defense took a double-digit lead midway though the first half, where its offense started to catch on. Hubin hit a 3-pointer and Rachel Kottke converted two free throws to put the Mustangs up 41-28 by halftime.

Sturm canned a 3 of her own to open the second half to cut the lead back to 10, but there was no stopping the trio of Hubin, Rachel Kottke and Kristi Kottke in the second half, as the three put BLHS up by as much as 25 before a timeout with 9:57 to play.

Springfield went on a 7-0 run to cut the lead back to 67-49, but a driving layup by Hubin cut the run short of a comeback. A deep 3-pointer by Sturm capped off the scoring for the night as subs entered the game with a minute to play.

Kelly said that his team, though finishing with a 17-12 record, outplayed their season record despite the tough schedule.

“You look at our schedule and we had a really tough schedule,” he said. “We had 12 losses, but in the Tomahawk Conference and the top three teams, that’s six [losses] right there. We had BOLD in there, we played Granada-Huntley-East Chain[/Martin Luther/Truman] who was a one-seed on the other side. We played Windom and Redwood — Windom won their subsection.

“We had a very tough schedule, so sometimes our record is a little bit deceiving. Some of those Tomahawk teams, they know us so well that they blew us out of the water at the beginning of the year. But towards the end of the year, the second half of the season, we started putting things together, started gaining confidence. But hey, the right time is now to make a run, and we did very well at playoff time.”

BLHS awaits state seeding to play Thursday at Maturi Pavilion at the University of Minnesota.