Hill-Murray is just where it wants to be — and exactly where it was last year — but coach Erin Herman is glad at least a few things are different.

“Alexandria’s a great team and they played really hard, but they haven’t been in this situation in a while,” Herman said. “We didn’t come in here, looking around. They know where the lights are, they know where the bathrooms are, and I think that makes the difference. There’s a comfort level that we didn’t have last year.”

It showed in the Pioneers’ poised play and ability to make adjustments on the fly on Thursday against Alexandria.

“Alexandria did some things that we haven’t seen all year — we haven’t seen that half-court pressure like that, that double-teaming, and I think the kids responded to it really well.

“I think we have more offensive weapons than we did last year. I think we’re very hard to defend, and I think we can hurt you in a lot of different ways.”

The right pieces

For DeLaSalle’s young team, this season has been not just a test in poise and maturity, but also an experimental project with a lot of different pieces. While there are a handful of holdovers, the Islanders gained Tyseanna Johnson and Allina Starr from Minneapolis North and Mariah Adanene from Minneapolis Southwest.

“The chemistry took a while,” Adanene said. “We’re really close friends, we’re all like family, so I think we kind of just clicked.”

Added coach Faith Johnson Patterson about Adanene: “I think she was a kept secret people just weren’t aware of.”

Shorter practices

Maranatha coach Jim Hammond thought he was on the verge of losing his team following a tough two-month stretch.

“We played awful in January and February,” Hammond said. “I was at wit’s end.”

The Mustangs dropped two games to conference rival New Life Academy 59-49 and 38-28 during that span. They entered the state tournament with a 20-9 record after opening the season ranked No. 2 in Class 1A.

“We decided to shorten our practices,” Hammond said. “We cut them in half, from an hour and a half to 45 minutes.”

Don’t expect it to change. The Mustangs are playing their best basketball of the season, beating No. 4 Minneota 49-43 in the quarterfinals on Thursday.

Unstoppable

The tournament media guide offers this pronunciation tip for Minneota senior forward Ashlynn Muhl: “Mull like dull.” She is anything but dull.

Muhl turned in the best individual performance of the tournament. She had 33 points and 23 rebounds in a 49-43 setback to Maranatha.

“She is a competitor,” Maranatha junior guard Alexis Long said. “She is tough to defend.”

Muhl came into the tournament averaging a double-double (17.8 points and 12.8 rebounds).

“She’s the best player we’ve seen all year,” Hammond said. “And we have played teams like Hopkins, Minneapolis South and DeLaSalle.”