St. Paul Johnson coach Vern Simmons summed up his team's narrow escape over Simley in the Section 4AAA semifinals simply.

"Thirteen threes," Simmons said. "(Simley) shot the ball. They played good."

Still, the Governors prevailed, edging the Spartans 71-69 thanks to Pierre Conwell's reverse layup off of an inbounds play with 2.2 seconds on the clock.

Johnson (27-2) survived the shooting onslaught of Simley's Jack and Sam Stensgard, each of whom seemingly couldn't miss for most of the game.

Simmons chalked up the closeness of the game, which appeared it might be a lopsided affair on paper given's Simley's 16-11 record, to the Governors being just a tad complacent.

Conwell agreed.

"We've gotta get better. I know we're better than that," Conwell said. "We played down to (Simley's) level. We've gotta get back to Johnson principals of basketball."

It's tough to get much better than the Governors at this point. With Tuesday night's victory, St. Paul Johnson has now won 18 straight games since falling to Hopkins 78-69 on Dec. 30.

It's been an impressive run and Simmons knows his team has a target on their backs, one that only gets bigger with each victory. It was that mentality that lead to the last play call, which Simmons said he hadn't run all season.

"We've been so well scouted and everybody knows what we do," Simmons said. "We're not under the radar … we've taken everybody's best game and we had that one play that pulled it out for us (tonight)."

The Governors now face a familiar foe on Friday night for the section 4AAA title and a trip to Target Center on the line.

St. Paul Central, which finished second in the St. Paul City Conference behind Johnson, and the Govs will clash on Friday night. Johnson beat the Minutemen twice in the regular season.

While the game should be a good one, Conwell has his sights set on bigger things.

"I want to win state," Conwell said. "That's what we're trying to do, all of us … we've gotta just play as a team and play our basketball. We're playing Central, and we've played them twice in conference so they know us, we know them. They're going to adapt to what we do and we've got to change stuff up."

With Simmons still pulling new plays out of his bag of tricks, adapting shouldn't be a problem for the Governors.