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MarshfieldAreaSports.com
NEILLSVILLE – The Marshfield Columbus Catholic has repeated as Cloverbelt Conference East Division champions after rolling to a 74-49 win over Neillsville on Monday night at Neillsville High School.
The Dons, who have won six of the last seven conference titles, improve to 20-3 overall and finish the Cloverbelt East season 13-1. Neillsville is now 17-6 and ends up 12-2 in conference play.
Columbus Catholic raced out to a 28-9 lead before Neillsville knew what hit them.
The Warriors regrouped with a 15-5 run to cut the deficit to 33-24 by halftime.
Neillsville stayed within single digits for much of the first eight minutes before the Dons pulled away again to win by 25.
“Maybe the layoff hurt them, they didn’t play Friday and we did, they had a six- or seven-day window, and I thought the start was huge,” Columbus Catholic coach Joe Konieczny said. “Wilczek, Jakobi and Koniecnzy hit some 3s and we were kind of off and running.”
The Dons hit 15 3-pointers in the victory, including five each from Emmitt Konieczny and Blake Jakobi, and four more from Sam Wilczek.
Konieczny finished with a game-high 26 points, Wilczek had 21 and Jakobi 15 in the win for Columbus.
Mason Roenz topped Neillsville with 16 points, while leading scorer Andrew Brown was held to just one made basket and seven points by Columbus Catholic’s Cole Noreen and others on the defensive end.
Both teams will play in the Cloverbelt Conference crossovers on Saturday at Neillsville. Neillsville will play Stanley-Boyd in the second-place game at 1 p.m. and Columbus Catholic will take on Fall Creek in the first-place game at approximately 3 p.m.
Dons 74, Warriors 49
Columbus Catholic 33 41 – 74
Neillsville 24 25 – 49
COLUMBUS CATHOLIC (74): Emmitt Konieczny 9 3-4 26, Sammy Neville 0 0-0 0, Isaac Mauritz 0 0-0 0, Nathan Nemitz 0 2-2 2, Cole Noreen 0 1-2 1, Cole Timmler 0 0-0 0, Charlie Moore 1 0-0 3, Sam Wilczek 6 5-6 21, Blake Jakobi 5 0-2 15, Grant Olson 0 4-4 4, Lucas Kreklau 1 0-0 2, Kole Hilgemann 0 0-0 0, Cy Becker 0 0-0 0, Sam Dums 0 0-0 0, Alex Edwards 0 0-0 0. FG: 22. FT: 15-20. 3-pointers: 15 (Jakobi 5, Konieczny 5, Wilczek 4, Moore 1). Fouls: 15. Fouled out: none. Record: 20-3, 13-1 Cloverbelt Conference East Division.
NEILLSVILLE (49): Kolin Schmitz 0 0-0 0, Braylon Boyer 1 0-0 3, Carter Urban 0 0-0 0, Bryce Erickson 1 0-1 3, Andrew Brown 1 5-7 7, Taytor Lowry 0 0-0 0, Ashten Schultz 0 0-0 0, Max Kreitlow 0 0-0 0, Alex Roman 3 0-0 9, Michael Byrne 2 0-0 6, Mason Roenz 7 2-4 16, Santana Subke 2 1-2 5, Sam Hayes 0 0-0 0. FG: 17. FT: 8-14. 3-pointers: 7 (Roman 3, Byrne 2, Erickson 1, Boyer 1). Fouls: 20. Fouled out: none. Record: 17-6, 12-2 Cloverbelt Conference East Division.