Gianna Kneepkens is making history in her senior season
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There have been a lot of great stories throughout the first month of the high school basketball season, but nobody has written more banner headlines than Gianna Kneepkens Gianna Kneepkens 5'11" | CG Duluth Marshall | 2021 State #86 Nation MN . It’s starting to sound like a broken record – a gold-plated, multi-platinum, smash-hit, gazillion-selling record – but Gianna has done it again. The Duluth Marshall senior this week became the first player in the history of Minnesota girls basketball to have four career 50-point games, passing the great Carlie Wagner of New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva.
Kneepkens broke the record on Monday in a 103-71 win over Hermantown when she posted her second 54-point game in just 10 days. On Jan. 29 Kneepkens had a 54-point performance at Pine City to top 3,000 for her career. On Jan. 16 she had 51 against Grand Rapids to go along with a 51-point game in 2019. Gianna’s record-smashing season has helped the Hilltoppers post an 8-1 record to date. Marshall coach CJ Osuchukwu remembers the first time he saw Kneepkens play in a summer league game in 2018.
“Just watching her I knew she could be good with her length and how she would fit with the style we really wanted to play,” he said. “I envisioned big things for her, but I am not going to lie and say that I thought she was going to average 42!”
In fact, Kneepkens is averaging 42.9 points per game. That’s 389 points in nine games, on pace for a 1,000-point season in a regular year. She’s shooting 59% from the field, 43% from three-point range, and 90% at the free throw line. She’s also averaging 13.1 rebounds, 5.9 assists and 6.3 steals per game. Her 9 blocks equals the combined total of everyone else on the team. It’s hard to imagine that any one player could be so dominant.
“She has unlimited range. If you aren’t guarding her past half court she can hit those shots,” Osuchukwu said. “Offensively she has a package that a lot of people can’t guard, especially one-on-one. She can score at all three levels. She can post up. She has a floater. She can score at the rim through contact. I would just say she is a heckuva scorer!”
All of those tools combined have enabled the 5’11 guard to rewrite the record books. According to Osuchukwu’s research, these are the six players who have had multiple 50-point games in their careers.
MINNESOTANS WITH MULTIPLE 50-POINT GAMES
Pts | Player | School | Date |
51 | Kneepkens | Duluth Marshall | 2/9/19 |
51 | Kneepkens | Duluth Marshall | 1/16/21 |
54 | Kneepkens | Duluth Marshall | 1/29/21 |
54 | Kneepkens | Duluth Marshall | 2/8/21 |
50 | Carlie Wagner | NRHEG | 12/18/12 |
50 | Carlie Wagner | NRHEG | 3/16/13 |
53 | Carlie Wagner | NRHEG | 3/19/14 |
50 | Yoki Lee | Byron | 2/13/17 |
54 | Yoki Lee | Byron | 2/26/18 |
51 | T’Kendra Elbert | Tartan | 2/14/12 |
55 | T’Kendra Elbert | Tartan | 2/7/14 |
52 | Judy McDonald | Chisholm | 12/15/83 |
50 | Judy McDonald | Chisholm | 1/5/84 |
54 | Kay Konerza | Lester Prairie | 2/9/81 |
58 | Kay Konerza | Lester Prairie | 2/22/82 |
It’s one thing to possess high-level skills; it’s another to know exactly what to do with them. Kneepkens knows. She has proved it night after night in the Northland. The University of Utah signee also proved it against some of the best players in the country with the Minnesota Fury. “She knows the game,” CJ said. “Having had the privilege to play varsity since 7th grade now the game is really, really slow for her. She kind of sees things before other people do.”
Tim Peper, who was Gianna’s coach with the Fury, agrees. “She has a great IQ. She knows where to be on the floor when she doesn’t have the ball and understands where her teammates are going to be,” said Peper. “She does a great job of delivering passes on time and in the right location. Her instincts are important because her finishing and ball-handling decisions are so split-second that you have to have a feel when to use what moves. If it’s not instinctual then it’s too slow.”
One of the nicest people
For all of her basketball ability there is one other thing people always say about Kneepkens: she is a terrific person. Soft-spoken and unassuming, Gianna is the last of seven children. Don and Betsy Kneepkens had six boys before their daughter arrived. Everyone who knows the family will tell you they did a great job of raising her.
“She has the biggest heart. If you are down she’s going to be the first person to reach out to you. ‘G’ is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet,” Osuchukwu said. “Usually when you think of somebody who is putting up big numbers, or having a killer mentality, they’ve got a little feistiness to them. You know, they might talk a little bit,” he said, referring to the cocky superstar persona we are all too familiar with. “Gianna has showed me that you don’t have to be like that. She is quiet, she’s super humble, and she kind of gets embarrassed when people bring up her accomplishments. That’s just who she is. It has been a great experience to be around her.”
Although Kneepkens may seem unassuming, inside she’s got the heart of a lion. She has another attribute that all great players have. “I think the most important trait is her work ethic,” Peper said. “She just lives in the gym, and because of that she has become so skilled with the finer points of the game. Her shooting ability, combined with her ball-handling ability and finishing – she is the best finisher around the basket that I have ever coached – provide her with a special skill set that makes her really hard to guard.”
Not a stat chaser
One of the challenges in coaching a super-elite player on a very good team is the whole issue of sportsmanship. I mean, it can get awkward when your team is running away with the game in the second half and the star player is making shots left and right. How long do you leave her in the game? Do you let her stay until the final buzzer so she can break more records? Or do you sit her down for the final few minutes so as not to rub the opponent’s nose in it.
CJ is a young guy, and the concept of Minnesota Nice was new to the native of Washington, D.C, when he came west to play ball at Hibbing Community College 10 years ago. I think he could be forgiven if the temptation to let his star player go crazy overruled his commitment to good sportsmanship. But it hasn’t.
“To be honest with you there have probably been about three games where she could have got 70,” he said. “I pull her out in the first half if we are up by a lot. In the second half it just depends on how the game is going. In the (Duluth) Denfeld game she came out with like 11 or 12 minutes left.”
One thing is for certain: Kneepkens definitely isn’t trying to run the score up. “Gianna is the farthest thing from being a stat chaser there is,” Osuchukwu said, when asked if she could have hit the state single-game record of 63 points. “My thing is, forcing 63 is less honorable than just getting 63,” said Osuchukwu. “Yeah, she could have scored 70 against Denfeld, but people in Minneapolis already think the basketball up here isn’t that good. If she scores 70 on a team that’s 0-20 they’re going to say anybody could have done that. But she had 54 against Hermantown. That’s a state team. She got 51 against Grand Rapids. They’re top 8 in QRF in class 3A. That’s a tough team. We’re aren’t picking and choosing when she scores. I never know how many she has until the end of the game.”
What lies ahead for Marshall?
Last season ended in heartbreak for Duluth Marshall. They were in the thick of the AA state tournament, and in great position to make a run at the championship, when the pandemic panic set in and the whole thing was called off. “That was tough. That was super tough,” said Osuchukwu, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Superior and works as a job coach for individuals with mental health challenges. The goal now to get back to state.
Many observers thought the Hilltoppers might struggle this season following the graduation of the great Grace Kirk. The Brown University freshmen shattered plenty of records herself, and the Kirk-Kneepkens combo was basically unstoppable. Instead, the team hasn’t skipped a beat and Gianna’s role has evolved. In addition to running the point and being more of a facilitator, she is taking a much higher percentage of the shots.
What has really made the difference for Marshall this season, according to Osuchukwu, are the contributions of the other players. “Obviously G has had a bigger load but the other girls, people like Merlea Mrozik (UW-River Falls) and Laila Monroe, they had to step up big-time for us. We’re really depending on a lot of youth to help us win games, whether that’s Ava Meierotto, who is in 7th grade, or Ada Skafte who is in 9th grade. Obviously I think G is a once-in-a-lifetime talent, especially around here, but a lot of girls have been playing their roles and Gianna has been helping and encouraging them. Obviously you can’t replace somebody like Grace Kirk but I think we’re a better basketball team because more people are doing more things.”
The team, which has been missing key veteran Dasia Starks Dasia Starks 5'9" | CG Duluth Marshall | 2022 State MN all season and currently has five other girls sidelined, is now in a position to win the Lake Superior Conference for the first time. The circuit includes the likes of Grand Rapids, Proctor and Hermantown, not exactly cupcakes. The team’s only loss so far is to Esko by just three points. To win the section and return to the state tournament, the Hilltoppers will have to get past the likes of Esko, Pequot Lakes and Virginia as well as another squad with a star attraction: Crosby-Ironton.
“I mean, Tori is making Crosby a contender. She just is,” Osuchukwu said of 2026 phenom Tori Oehrlein Tori Oehrlein 5'10" | CG Crosby-Ironton | 2026 State MN , who actually trains with and is being mentored by Kneepkens. “I love Tori,” CJ added with a chuckle, “but I ain’t losing to no 7th grader!”
Top photo: Gianna Kneepkens Gianna Kneepkens 5'11" | CG Duluth Marshall | 2021 State #86 Nation MN and her mom Betsy were on top of the mountain during their visit to the University of Utah.