Preparation was no problem for Dover-Eyota Wednesday. The Eagles had been preparing for their Class 2A quarterfinal game for a half-dozen years.

Shaking off a case of state tournament jitters, the Eagles blitzed Fairmont from the outset, building a 10-point halftime lead and cruising to a 62-53 victory.

Hailing from the basketball-crazy Three Rivers Conference in Minnesota’s southeast corner, Dover-Eyota had strung together six very successful seasons prior to this year but had never been able to get out of the section playoffs. It took the best season in school history – the Eagles posted a team-record 28 victories prior to Wednesday – to finally push them over the top.

“There are so many good teams in our section and we’ve never been able to beat them [in the section playoffs] before,” said senior center Megan Hintz. “So we were a little nervous to finally get here.”

As the tournament’s No. 2 seed, Dover-Eyota showed it wasn’t content just to get to the tournament. Guards Brandi Blattner and Madison Nelson attacked the basket at every opportunity. When the shots didn’t fall, the Eagles were there to clean up the rebounds and get easy putbacks. Dover-Eyota scored 42 of its 62 points in the paint and out-rebounded Fairmont 48-41.

Blattner and Hintz each posted double-doubles for Dover-Eyota. Blattner finished with 19 points and 12 rebounds while Hintz had 11 points and 16 rebounds.

“We had the whole town of Eyota here supporting us,” Blattner said. “It’s great make that mark in history of begin the first ones here.”

First-time entrant Dover-Eyota, attacking the basket from outset, built a 10-point halftime lead and held on, fending off a late charge by Fairmont to emerge with a 62-53 Class 2A quarterfinals victory.

Guard Brandi Blattner led the Eagles (29-2) with 19 points and center Megan Hintz had 10 points and 16 rebounds. Fairmont’s Sierra Schultz led all scorers with 22 points.