St. Francis senior Cody Wald estimated he slept about three hours last Thursday, the night before his team played Andover in the Class 4A, Section 7 basketball championship.

Wald was battling a flulike symptoms last week. He said he woke up Friday morning tired and dehydrated but determined to play.

“There was no way I was going to sit,” Wald said. “I just wanted to be able to help contribute.”

Wald went to urgent care and received fluids intravenously Friday and played most of the game that night. He scored six points as St. Francis defeated Andover 66-55 and clinched its first state tournament berth since 2000.

“He found a way to play on a few graham crackers and water and was extremely effective,” coach Ryan Hauge said. “There aren’t many leaders you ever get to coach like that.”

Wald is part of a senior class that has scored more than 80 percent of St. Francis’ points this season, including 53 of the team’s 66 Thursday. The 10-player class helped the Fighting Saints improve from nine victories in 2011-12 to 17 last season and 24 this season.

Senior Jake Johnson has been key in St. Francis’ success this season and leads the team with 19.3 points per game. He scored a team-high 16 points in the section championship, helping St. Francis erase the memory of its loss to Andover in the section semifinals last season.

Johnson will play for Northern State next year. Until then, he and St. Francis’ seniors have at least one more game together — a matchup with No. 3 seed Cretin-Derham Hall (23-6) on Wednesday at Target Center.

“We got nothing to lose,” Johnson said. “Hopefully we can take it to Cretin, beat them, and then we’d be guaranteed two more games after that, and I think we’d all like that.”

 

Sophomores lift Osseo

Osseo sophomores Kiara Russell and Lemia Ntor-Ue scored 16 and 12 points, respectively, as the Orioles beat Robbinsdale Cooper 55-53 in overtime in the Class 4, Section 5 quarterfinals Thursday. Cooper tied the score with about two seconds remaining, Osseo coach John Rieser said, but the Orioles hung on in overtime.

 

Briefly

• Totino-Grace junior Sydney Borys scored 24 points Thursday as the second-seeded Eagles defeated seventh-seeded Fridley 70-50 in the Class 3A, Section 3 quarterfinals.

 

Nate Gotlieb is a University of Minnesota student reporter on assignment for the Star Tribune.