Randolph enters the D2 State Tourney as a big underdog

LINCOLN - The Randolph boys basketball team is focusing on 2020, and would like to forget that 2019 ever happened.

The Cards head into this week’s Class D2 State Basketball Tournament as the eighth seed. The low seeding is because the team only posted a 3-5 mark in December, but has since put together a 14-2 record in 2020.

Randolph (17-7) will take on top seed Humphrey St. Francis (25-0) at 9 a.m. Thursday at Lincoln Southeast High School

Randolph continued its winning ways with a March 2, 47-39 win over No. 9 Deshler at the Shelby-Rising City District final.

“We were down 14 in the third quarter and we started getting aggressive on defense and started forcing some turnovers and our offense started to pick up and making shots,” Randolph head coach Mark Anderson said. “We kept getting closer until with about two minutes left to go in the game, we tied it up. It was a great defensive effort. We forced 22 turnovers in the second half.”

Now it’s on to Lincoln and a shot to go against Class D2 Juggernaut St. Francis (25-0).

But, still, not bad for a Cardinals team that started 0-4 and has since won 17 of its last 20 games.

“Early on we played some really tough teams,” Anderson said. “Those were big challenges for us and then we got a transfer (Jamison Svehla) in who started scoring for us and that helped us. We played hard; we Just didn’t have enough firepower against some of those teams to win.”

The Cardinals are riding high and the play by Carter Schnoor (16.4 ppg, 4.7 apg, 3.8 rpg), Keaton Backhaus (14.2 ppg, 7.7 rpg) and Svehla (15.0, 4.7 rpg) has keyed this big run.

St. Francis counters with the triple-headed threat of guards that includes Trevor Pfeifer (16.6 ppg, 5.1 rpg), Tanner Pfeifer (15.0, 4.6 rpg) and Justin Leifeld (11.1 ppg, 4.6 rpg).

“It will be a tough matchup and we watched them on film quite a bit so we know they are a quality team,” Anderson said. “Any time you go undefeated in any class, you have a good ballclub. We will have to do a lot of things well: Obviously play good defense and handle the trap and press so we can get some quality looks at the basket. They are pretty physical and big. They have two or three guys who can score.”