SUPERIOR, Wis. – It seems that during every playoff run, you see an unlikely hero. It could be one basket, a blocked shot, or a career night, but every year someone new steps up to spur a team to victory.
 
That's just what happened for the Yellowjacket women's basketball team Wednesday night in the UMAC Semifinals against Northwestern. Sure, the likes of Reinertsen, Ruiz, and Carpenter were their normal selves, but they were all upstaged by the career night of Mackenzie Kmecik (Superior, Wis./Superior Senior).
 
Kmecik, a senior who played her prep ball up the street at Superior High School, came into the night averaging 1.85 points per game for her career. Wednesday she dropped in a career-high 23 points, leading all scorers as the Yellowjackets advanced to the UMAC Championship game with a 90-83 victory over Northwestern at Mertz Mortorelli Gym.
 
Going back to the days in the WIAC, this will mark the seventh straight season the Yellowjackets (18-8) have reached the conference championship game. It's the third year in a row the Yellowjackets will meet Bethany Lutheran, who escaped a second-half surge from Minnesota Morris to reach the final.
 
The Yellowjackets came out firing, building up a 17-5 lead midway through the first quarter.  The lead reached 13 points when Marissa Ruiz (Inver Grove Heights, Minn./Simley) hit a free throw in the final minute, but Brooklyn Dekam brought it back to ten, 20-10, when she hit a three pointer at the buzzer.
 
The teams traded punches in the second quarter, but the Yellowjackets pulled away late. Kmecik drained a three with under two minutes to go to make it a 15-point Yellowjacket lead, and later Kaelyn Christian (St. Michael, Minn./St. Michael-Albertville Senior) hit a three to give the Yellowjackets a 43-27 advantage at the break.
 
Northwestern flipped the script in the third quarter, putting on a three-point shooting clinic and quickly erasing the Yellowjacket lead. The Eagles hit six threes in the quarter, prompting Yellowjacket head coach Zach Otto-Fisher to ask Northwestern head coach Aaron Kahl if he had an "X" on the floor in the spot they were hitting shots from. Humor aside, the Yellowjackets saw their lead reduced to just six, 61-55, close the third quarter.
 
The three pointers continued to drop for the Eagles in the fourth, and they came all the way back to take the lead, 63-61, just a minute into the final frame. The teams traded points, and the lead, multiple times in the quarter, but when the Yellowjackets needed a big play, it was Kmecik. She made a pair of free throws with 5:51 to play to put the Yellowjackets up 66-64. She hit a jumper with 3:24 to go to make it a two-possession game, 74-69.
 
Northwestern was able to get the game back to within one, only to have the Yellowjackets bend but not break. With under a minute to go Reinertsen hit a layup to push the lead to three, and ten seconds later Kmecik made it 83-78 with a jumper of her own. It was only fitting that Kmecik not only closed out the scoring with four free throws, but also grabbed the game's final rebound, sending the 'Jackets to the title game.
 
In addition to Kmecik's dominating performance, the Yellowjackets also got 16 points from Ruiz and 15 from Carpenter.
 
On a night when Reinertsen established a new school record for games played (109) and moved into third place on the all-time scoring list (1,314 points), she scored 14 and grabbed 12 rebounds, her 11^th double-double of the year.
 
The Yellowjackets will play at Bethany Lutheran Saturday, February 29. The opening tip-off from North Gymnasium is set for 7:30 p.m.