By John Rittenhouse
Ellsworth's boys' basketball Cinderella season came to an end after a 32-minute battle with Southwest Christian during Monday's South Section 3A Tournament championship game in Worthington.
The Panthers played right with the three-time defending state champion Eagles for four quarters in front of the large crowd in Worthington High School.
In the end, SWC absorbed all of Ellsworth's best shots and pulled out an 80-74 victory.
The win sends SWC to tonight's Section 3A championship game at Southwest State University in Marshall, where it plays North Section 3A champion Canby for the right to appear in the state tournament.
The loss ended Ellsworth's 20-6 season, a campaign in which the Panthers surprised many by earning the school's second berth in a post-season title game (the first one came in 1987) while coming off a 5-14 2000-01 season.
"My head was up, even at the end of the game," said Panther coach Ken Kvaale, who was named the South Section 3A Coach of the Year when the title tilt was complete. "I think we scared them."
The way things looked on the court, nobody told the Panthers that they were supposed to be intimidated by southwest Minnesota's best team the past four years.
Ellsworth, a team that uses six players during the course of most games, stood toe-to-toe with SWC and its 11-athlete rotation. The Panthers beat the odds by sporting a four-point halftime lead in a game that was tied with 4:24 left to play, but the Eagles put together an impressive run the rest of the way to pull out a six-point win.
The Eagles found out they were in a fight for their post-season lives after scoring the game's first two points early in the first quarter.
Panther sophomore Curt Schilling erased the lead by draining a three-point shot before Dylan Kvaale netted back-to-back field goals to give EHS a 7-2 advantage.
SWC answered the challenge, going on a 10-2 run capped by Ethan Mesman's three-point shot at the 3:51 mark of the period to give the Eagles a 12-9 lead.
Kvaale, who scored a game-high 27 points to go along with five rebounds and four assists, helped the Panthers regain the lead at 18-14 with a field goal with 1:43 remaining in the stanza. SWC, however, closed the quarter with an 8-2 surge that gave it a 22-20 edge heading into the second period.
Ellsworth gained the upper hand in the early stages of the second period and led 27-24 when Brant Deutsch scored off an offensive rebound with 5:56 remaining in the first half.
SWC used a 6-0 surge to pull in front 30-27, but the Panthers gained their first of three one-point cushions at 33-32 when Travis Jenniges drained a pair of free throws at the 3:05 mark of the stanza.
Ellsworth was in front 38-37 when Kvaale hit a three and Deutsch added a pair of free throws to a 5-2 run in the final minute of the half to give the Panthers a 43-39 lead at the intermission.
SWC dictated play to start the second half as it used an 8-4 run in the first 1:44 to tie the game at 47 before opening a 53-49 advantage as the period progressed.
Ellsworth trimmed the difference to two points (53-51) when Blake Brommer hit a pair of free throws to cap the scoring in the third quarter.
The Panthers knotted the score at 53 and 56 with a field goal by Kvaale and a three-point shot by Tom Janssen in the first 1:44 of the fourth quarter. EHS countered a 4-0 SWC surge with a field goal by Kvaale and two free throws from Schilling with 4:24 left to play to tie the game at 61.
At that point SWC put together a 9-0 run that gave it a 70-61 cushion with less than two minutes left to play.
Ellsworth did battle back to pull within four points (78-74) when Kvaale scored while being fouled with :20.5 remaining, but that was as close as the Panthers would come to catching SWC the rest of the night.
Schilling turned in a 20-point, seven-rebound, five-assist effort for the Panthers. Deutsch had eight rebounds and five assists, and Jenniges led EHS with four steals.
Jeff Schaap (18 points), Ross Reitsma (17), Mesman (15) and Dan DeWitt (12) led the Eagles to victory.
Box score
Schilling 4 1 9-10 20, Jenniges 0 0 3-4 3, Janssen 2 1 0-0 7, Kvaale 12 1 0-2 27, Deutsch 1 1 4-6 9, Brommer 2 0 4-4 8.
Team statistics
Ellsworth: 25 of 50 field goals (50 percent), 10 of 14 free throws (71 percent), 25 rebounds, six turnovers.