The seven times Blair-Taylor High School’s boys basketball team has made the state tournament, it lost.
Thursday at the Kohl Center in Madison, Wis., that drought finally ended.
The big three for the Wildcats scored all but three points in a 47-32 win over Unity in the Division 4 semifinal.
Dalton Soto scored 17, Simeon Pooler had 14 and Brett Ladsten added 13 for B-T, which now looks up, literally, to its state championship opponent, Diamond Stone and No. 1-ranked Whitefish Bay Dominican (24-3).
Stone is a 6-foot-10 junior and the fourth-ranked recruit on rivals.com.
He had 30 points, 12 rebounds, seven blocks and seven assists in a 78-47 rout of Brillion (18-9). Stone, a five-star recruit getting interest from teams like Georgetown, Indiana, Arizona and UConn, is scoring 24.1 on 71.9-percent shooting, to go along with 13 rebounds per game.
When asked what B-T is going to have to do against Stone and Dominican, coach Randy Storlie simply laughed and said, “You know as well as I do, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure this out. We’re going to shoot 3s and hope the ball goes in the hole.
“Diamond Stone is an unbelievable player. We’re going to shoot, attack and play our zone defense and enjoy every second of those 32 minutes.”
Dominican (24-3), which lost three of four games from Dec. 14-27 at holiday tournaments, has won the last two WIAA Division 4 state championships thanks in part to Stone, whose game high this season is 44 points.