Jackson County Central made it through Section 3 to reach the Class 2A boys basketball state tournament in 2024. The Huskies ran into Albany in the quarterfinals and were defeated 87-66. There was a rematch on Tuesday, March 24, before a smallish audience at Target Center, and Jackson County brought with it a plan of action for this trip to Minneapolis:

“Let’s win that thing.”

Comparing scores always is a risky business, particularly in a competition with the nightly variables of basketball, but the Huskies could find optimism in the fact they had defeated No. 1-rated Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta 57-52 in the section final, and Albany had lost to MACA earlier in February.

This tournament also was going to be the last go-round for Roman Voss and Weston Rowe as partners in athletic success, going back to third grade. They were big parts of back-to-back Class 2A football titles in 2024 and 2025.

Football will now be the game for both, with Voss headed to the Gophers as a coveted recruit, and Rowe having committed to South Dakota State early in 2025.

Voss had been ordered by P.J. Fleck to be on campus on June 3 to start learning the art of playing tight end. One day later, Rowe will get in his truck and make the two-hour, all-freeway drive to Brookings to become a very large Jackrabbit.

Even with that as the future, basketball always has been at least tied with football as a passion.

“To be honest, basketball was my sport,” Rowe said in a phone conversation last week. “I was a tall kid and had played summer basketball all over the country. And in football, I didn’t play that much … didn’t get started until high school."

As for Voss, he was a starting quarterback as an eighth-grader for Jackson’s long-standing powerhouse program, but he brought the same fire to basketball — not a great shooter, but a maker of quick decisions and a fierce driver to the basket.

Voss entered Tuesday’s game needing 32 points to get to 2,000 for his career, even after missing several stretches of games because of injuries.

“As a sophomore at U.S. Bank [Stadium] in the semis against Barnesville, I kind of hurt my shoulder and missed 11 basketball games to start the season,” Voss said last week. “Then this year, Weston and I were playing in the high school all-star game a week after the Prep Bowl.

“And in that game, Howie Johnson, the D-lineman from Forest Lake, great guy, going to be a teammate with the Gophers … he tripped me on a dropback and I wound up with turf toe. It was awful to try to start the basketball season with turf toe."

Two weeks ago in Marshall, attendees of the section title game saw a Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta team with several players in the 6-2 to 6-5 range that looked and moved like classic Minnesota prep basketball standouts.

Jackson County Central had the 6-4 Voss (at a glance, you’re thinking 210 pounds, but he’s already 230 on the way to 240-plus as a Big Ten tight end) and the 6-7 Rowe — “I like to eat. … I’m 280-plus now, but I think South Dakota State wants me about 305 to play offensive tackle," he said.

Smart kid, this one: His dad Nic is an engineer working in the agriculture business (of course), and the three service academies were interested in getting appointments for Weston.

In that section final, Jackson’s defenders were able to speed up the Morris shooters early on and all those prototype prep hoopers started missing the three-pointers they often made. That put the pressure on. Morris wound up 4-for-30 from three-point range, Voss mostly slashed his way to 29 points and Jackson County Central had the upset win.

Back to the state. A rematch with Albany.

And you know what folks tell us about sports — and life: What goes around comes around?

That was the case Tuesday night. Albany, defending champs, four new starters, a new coach, but eight deep in true basketball players, took apart Jackson County Central both offensively and defensively.

Albany, another group of Huskies, jumped ahead 10-0 and was never challenged. The defenders stayed in front of Voss, took away his drives, held him to seven points, and it became an 84-49 no-contest win for the defending champs.

“The past three games we’ve played amazing,” Voss said. “We were the No. 4 team in the state, had a really good chance of winning it here …

“I couldn’t have played worse basketball. Our team couldn’t have played worse basketball, so it’s just frustrating. That’s part of sports, part of life.”

And back home in Jackson, while the basketball team has a couple of light practices in the Twin Cities and waits for a consolation game on Friday, March 27, there is cruel world trauma taking place.

There was a horrendous traffic crash on Friday, March 20, on the notorious Hwy. 71 in that area that left five dead, including four members of the Johnson family — Richard Warren Johnson, who would have turned 74 on March 21, and wife Kathleen Ann Johnson, 73, both of Jackson, and their daughters, Kelly Christine Hargus, 49, of Jackson, and Lindsey Kay Rossow, 47, of Lakefield.

I was talking with fathers Rod Voss and Nic Rowe on Tuesday and asked about that tragedy.

“Everyone in Jackson and the area knows the Johnsons,” Voss said. “Big family, good people. It’s horrible.”