KAUKAUNA — Their biggest competition doesn't appear to be the, well, competition. The guys they're most concerned with are the formidable tandem of Father Time and Old Man Winter.
"Yeah, it's hard to recover,'' said 43-year-old Kurt Woelffer, a former Menasha High School standout. "But I'm going to play as long as I can. Once you stop, you can't start again.''
The rather elder statesmen from Lids Team Sports/The Bar – Green Bay will certainly be in recovery mode today, but it will be done so with a smile on their faces after they blew past Las Vegas Fun Jet – Milwaukee 104-83 in the championship game of the 44th Holy Cross Men's Open Basketball Tournament on Sunday night.
"It's fading fast,'' said 39-year-old Jeff Nordgaard, the former all-American out of UW-Green Bay and NBA player with the Milwaukee Bucks, who earned most valuable player honors.
"I don't know, but I'm feeling it after today I'll tell you that. Two games in one day; it used to be you could play four games in a day without any problem. Now you play two games and it's like, 'Sub! Sub!' Luckily, we have enough weapons that if one or two guys get tired, we've got some guys who can come in.''
Lids Team Sports/The Bar is a group that came together roughly a decade ago, guys who played a lot of three-on-three tournaments with and against each other. Included in that group are Kon Knueppel, of the Flying Knueppel Brothers fame who were elected to the Gus Macker Three-on-Three Hall of Fame; Josh Metzger, a two-time Holy Cross MVP who played professionally in Europe for two seasons; Wayne Walker, another former UW-Green Bay standout, Neenah's Justin Freier, who played at UW-Stevens Point; and Woelffer, who along with Freier have achieved success in three-on-three at the world level, once placing second in the World Cup tournament in Italy.
"The reason why we put the team together that we have is because of the way we play,'' said Nordgaard. "We're confident in each other in the way we can play and what our skills are. But we also know our roles, and that's not always the case with a lot of talented players that come to these tournaments.
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"Not always are there guys who they play together and necessarily play the right way. I don't mean that there's one way to play but it's one thing to have a bunch of good players and it's another thing to have a team. And we've played together enough to know each other's tendencies, know where to find one another, know our strengths and weaknesses and that helps us be successful even against guys who are younger, bigger, stronger and faster.''
Aside from helping as an assistant coach to former teammate Gary Greszk at St. Norbert College, Nordgaard also works for Lids Team Sports, selling Nike apparel and jerseys to high schools and colleges.
And in his free time there's basketball, something that still runs hot through his veins.
"We're going to try and keep playing together with this core unit,'' Nordgaard said, "until we get too old.''
By the looks of things Sunday night, that might be a few years away.
The 10-player all-tournament team consisted of Nordgaard, Derek Koch (Mahoney's – Oshkosh), Rodney Jones (Milwaukee Spirits), Doug Kadison and Ryan Kroeger (Hurley Insurance), Rion Rayfield and Will Graham (Las Vegas Fun Jet – Milwaukee) and Wayne Walker, Josh Metzger and Kon Knueppel (LIDS Team Sports/The Bar – Green Bay).
Knueppel was voted Most Popular Player while Richard "Sammy" Pomroy of Kaukauna was named the Outstanding Fan.
In Sunday afternoon's semifinals, Nordgaard scored 29 points, Metzger 27 and Walker 25 as LIDS Team Sports/The Bar – Green Bay beat the Milwaukee Spirits 97-89. In the other semifinal, Las Vegas Fun Jet – Milwaukee topped Hurley Insurance 74-62. Will Graham had 18 points for Fun Jet, while former Lawrence University players Kroeger and Andy Hurley had 13 and 12 points, respectively, for Hurley Insurance.
In the third-place game, Kadison scored 30 points and Krueger 22 as Hurley Insurance beat the Milwaukee Spirits 108-85.
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