This turned out just the way Wayzata coach Bryan Schnettler planned it.
“It was perfect,” Schnettler said after the Trojans defeated No. 1-seeded Cretin-Derham Hall 80-55 in the Class 4A championship game.
Wayzata (28-4) started the game doing just what it had hoped to do and continued to do so all game long, running the baseline, finding open players and continuously harassing the bigger, stronger Raiders.
“It was exactly what, if you’re game-planning, you want it to look like,” Schnettler said. “We moved the ball. It was the first time in the tournament I thought we played relaxed.”
While guards Nolen Anderson, Christian Wiggins and Isaac Ohnstad were finding good looks at the basket as a result of the Trojans’ endlessly active offense, sturdy forwards Tommy Shunmugavelu and Wyatt McBeth spent the game harassing Cretin-Derham Hall’s 6-11 post Tommy Ahneman, a Notre Dame commit.
They held Ahneman scoreless for the first 12 minutes of the game and never let him get comfortable down low, where he usually thrives. Ahneman finished with a mild 15 points and eight rebounds.
“Tommy’s [Shunmugavelu] a stud, and he moves so well for a guy with his size and strength,” Schnettler said. “We were hoping he could guard [Ahneman] one-on-one, and he proved he could.”
It was the slender 6-7 McBeth who made the Trojans’ biggest statement of the game, however, when he soared off the baseline and threw down a one-handed dunk over Ahneman, bringing the biggest roar of the night from the large Williams Arena crowd.
