Blooming Prairie girls’ basketball moves into Section 1A semi-finals with 65-30 victory over Randolph

The Blooming Prairie Awesome Blossoms girls’ basketball team, the No. 1 seed in the Section 1A girls’ basketball tournament tangled with the ninth-seeded Randolph Rockets in the section quarterfinals at Rochester Century High School Monday evening, and a 19-1 first half run broke the game wide open and helped the Blossoms to a 65-30 win.

It looked early on as if the game would be a runaway as BP jumped out to a quick 9-0 lead, but the Rockets picked up a three-pointer from their leading scorer, Megan Erickson to key an 8-0 run to cut the Blossom lead to 9-8.  Blooming Prairie quickly recovered, though, and used stifling defense and an offense that saw the ball go into the post for Megan Oswald, plus also to shooters such as Julia Worke and Bobbi Bruns to go on a 19-1 run to take a 28-9 lead late in the first half.  After the 3-pointer by Erickson and a two-point field goal from Meredith Taylor early in the half, the Blossoms’ defense forced 11 Randolph turnovers and gave up only one more field goal the rest of the half to lead 32-12 at the break.

BP didn’t take their foot off the gas in the second half as their defense continued to stifle the Rockets and offensivley, the Blossoms drilled six 3’s in the half, three of them by Bruns, two for Worke and one for Maggie Bruns, plus Oswald scored 12 of her 24 points in the game in the half to help balloon the Blooming Prairie lead over 35 points at one time on the way to the win.

Besides Oswald’s 24 points, Bobbi Bruns finsished with 17 points, 11 of those in the second half, while Worke wound up swishing three 3-pointers on her way to 13 points.  Maya Lembke addded four points, Maggie Bruns chipped in three points and Allison Krohnberg and Anna Pauly added two apiece for the Blossoms, who earned their 20th win of the season and a trip to the section semi-finals at 11:00 a.m. Saturday morning at the Mayo Civic Auditorium in Rochester versus the fourth-seeded Hayfield Vikings, who knocked off No. 5 seed Kingsland Monday night in the following game 47-43.

You’ll hear the game right here on AM 1480 KAUS, on the world-wide web at myaustinminnesota.com, and on the I Heart Radio app.