When the final buzzer sounded on Thursday night in Baldwin, the Prescott Cardinals’ hopes of a second consecutive Middle Border Conference championship had all but been extinguished.

The Cardinals left the floor and headed into the locker room after suffering a 73-58 loss, Prescott’s second MBC defeat of the season, which essentially sealed Osceola’s path to its first Middle Border Conference championship since 2009.

Although Prescott has yet to be mathematically eliminated from the conference title race, the Cardinals’ unlikely path would include No. 4-ranked Osceola, which is currently 20-0, losing its final three league games against Saint Croix Central, Somerset and Prescott.

Throughout the first meetings with those three teams, Osceola won each game by at least 11 points. That meant that Prescott’s loss against Baldwin-Woodville on Thursday, Feb. 9, sealed the deal, and head coach Nick Johnson knew it.

“We know what we just lost,” Johnson said after the game. “It hurts. We just couldn’t figure it out defensively and that’s on me.”

Johnson’s comments primarily reflect the second half, as his team’s defense fell apart in one of the biggest games of the year. Prescott took a 35-30 lead into the halftime intermission and then saw that five-point advantage turn into a six-point deficit almost instantly.

Baldwin-Woodville came out of the break on an 11-0 scoring run that grabbed control of the game and put Prescott on the ropes. The Cardinals struggled to respond to adversity which only fueled the noise of the Blackhawks’ raucous senior night crowd.

Perhaps no Baldwin-Woodville player was more impactful than senior forward Eli Coenen, whose physicality in the post was too much for the Cardinals to handle, as he generated open shots at will with crafty post moves.

His dominance on the interior led to a highly efficient night that included 21 points on 8-11 shooting from the floor, while also tallying 15 rebounds, three assists, three steals and two blocks. Coach Johnson spoke about struggling to contain Coenen on Thursday night.

“We were trying to double him in all of our defenses, but it didn’t matter what we tried,” Johnson said. “We tried man, 1-3-1 zone, our 2-3 zone, we tried to put bodies on him but it was too easy for him.”

With 10 minutes remaining in regulation, Prescott trailed 50-46. That’s when Baldwin-Woodville went on a 14-4 run that spanned five minutes and culminated in a 6450 lead that essentially ended the game.

Whether it was the aforementioned Coenen or senior Sean VanSomeren who played in the other starting forward position, Baldwin-Woodville dominated the paint the entire night. VanSomeren finished with 23 points on 11-16 shooting from the floor while also grabbing four rebounds.

Baldwin-Woodville’s sheer physicality led to an efficient 57% shooting from the floor, compared to Prescott’s 43% on Thursday night. The Blackhawks also outrebounded Prescott 29-19 in the win. Coach Johnson spoke about how Baldwin-Woodville’s physicality impacted the game.

“That’s why we went to the 2-3 zone to try to put more bodies down there to help us out, because last time they outrebounded us by 20,” Johnson said. “We wanted to pack the middle and it still didn’t work. We just didn’t have any answers and that’s on me.”

While Baldwin-Woodville’s big hitters filled up the box score easily, Prescott senior point guard Jordan Malmlov struggled to do the same. The Blackhawks played suffocating man-to-man defense on Malmlov the entire night, which led to just eight points on 2-12 shooting from the floor.

Malmlov entered the game averaging nearly 24 points per contest. Coach Johnson spoke about how he and the staff need to figure out ways to get Malmlov quality looks when the opposition does everything in their power to take him out of the game.

“I don’t think we do a good enough job to free him and I’m yelling at (the players) to set him screens and it’s like we’re just lost and confused,” Johnson said. “It’s not like we haven’t seen a box and one, but that’s my job and I’m not helping him out enough.”

The game against Baldwin-Woodville is a microcosm of Prescott’s last two years. When the Cardinals run into a tough, physical team that can play defense, Prescott typically doesn’t have an answer.

The defensive struggles force Prescott to be perfect offensively, which is nearly impossible against good teams. Because of those issues, the Cardinals have to try to turn every game into a track meet in which 90 or 100 points need to be scored to win. For coach Johnson, that just isn’t realistic.

“This has been our problem for two years. We just can’t get stops against a good team,” Johnson said. “We hope we can come out and score 120 against (good teams) and that just doesn’t work in high school basketball. We can get away with it against a mediocre team, but when we have no answer defensively it puts us in a hole and we’ve got to be perfect offensively. Obviously, it’s not working.”

With the loss, Prescott dropped to 16-5 overall and 10-2 in Middle Border Conference games with just three games remaining in the 2022-23 regular season.

The Cardinals will be back in action at home against River Falls on Monday, Feb. 13. Tip-off for that game is slated for 8:30 p.m.

Junior Ian Leask of the Prescott boys basketball team takes a Baldwin-Woodville defender off the dribble during the first half of the Cardinals Middle Border Conference game on the road on Thursday night. Photo by Reagan Hoverman