Only once in the last decade has Hopkins not reached a girls basketball state title game. Rosemount players remember that season well.

While sitting in the stands at Target Center in April 2021, several Rosemount middle schoolers watched their future high school basketball program fall just short of its first state championship, losing 45-43 to Chaska.

“We had one back-door play …” junior guard Amisha Ramlall recalled, trailing off.

“That last shot …” her sophomore sister, Ashna Ramlall, chimed in, referring to Chaska’s game-winning layup with 5.7 seconds to play.

Rosemount head coach Chris Orr dropped his head in his hands, though not looking too dejected coming off Thursday’s 65-64 semifinal win over Rochester Mayo.

“Why’d you have to bring it up?” he sighed.

On March 14, Rosemount (28-3) gets to try again for an elusive state championship, facing the program that’s made its residence in the title game since that 2021 season, when champ Chaska also booted Hopkins from the state semifinals, 67-62.

Top-seeded Hopkins (27-2) hasn’t faced a so-called “early exit” (by its high standards) since that 2021 season, delayed and shortened by the coronavirus pandemic. The Royals hoisted a championship trophy in 2022, finished runner up to St. Michael-Albertville and Minnetonka, then lifted another trophy in 2025 — the latter a Minnesota-record ninth state title.

The defending champions have the chance to claim back-to-back titles for the first time since winning three straight from 2011-13, after the pandemic cut short their defense of their 2019 title the following year.

“Pressure is a privilege for us, and everyone wants to beat us,” Hopkins junior forward Erma Walker said. “But [we’re] just playing for our sisters, and just going out doing we’re supposed to.”

Here’s what to keep an eye on in Saturday’s matchup, set for 8 p.m. at Williams Arena:

Juniors make the jump

No shortage of talented players — WNBA No. 1 draft pick Paige Bueckers, Florida’s All-SEC guard Liv McGill, Stanford’s Nunu Agara and Gophers Amaya Battle and Taylor Woodson, among others — have taken the court for Hopkins in its 12-year streak of reaching the state tournament.

This current chapter of the Royals’ run is being largely written by the class of 2027, which includes Walker, point guard Jaliyah Diggs, guard Ava Cupito and forward Inarah Nesbitt.

“It was tough losing our seniors last year. We had some really good leaders, real positive kids,” Hopkins head coach Tara Starks said. “I’ve been on them all year about leadership … Probably about a month ago, they figured out a way to come together, to have each other’s backs.”

Said Diggs, the Royals’ All-Minnesota playmaker who had 20 points, nine rebounds and three steals in their 60-45 semifinal win over Maple Grove: “There was a stretch of games where we just weren’t playing our best basketball, and everybody was just doing their own thing.”

Those games might have still ended in wins, but Hopkins was looking up at its high ceiling.

“Coach Starks had a talk with us, we had a talk with ourselves,” Diggs said. “We really had to come together, mature and step up for us.”

In addition to Starks, who took over the Hopkins program in 2020, Walker has been a longtime presence in this Royals’ renewed title-game streak.

The All-Minnesota forward played one minute in the 2023 championship as an eighth grader, then posted a 14-point, 11-rebound double-double as a freshman and led the Royals with 28 points in last year’s championship. Walker plays every inch of her 6-foot height, with tough physicality but a soft finishing touch.

“If you go big on her, she can get by you,” Starks said. “You go smaller, she can post you up.”

Walker, alongside players like the versatile defender Nesbitt and 6-1 eighth-grade forward Marianna Davis (22 points in quarterfinals), could pose interesting matchups in the post for a lengthy but guard-heavy Irish team.

Rosemount from range

The Irish, the No. 2 seed in the bracket, provides its own unique challenge with disruptive defense, like Hopkins, and high-volume three-point shooting, less so like Hopkins. Hopkins is 4-for-19 from deep in the tournament so far, and Rosemount is 15-for-38.

“That was the one thing that I told the girls coming in this game,” Starks said after Hopkins’ semifinal win. “It’s us, and then there’s three teams that like to really shoot it.”

And Rosemount can “really shoot it,” thanks to leading scorers Amisha and Ashna Ramlall and junior point guard Gianna Carpentier, plus a host of other players who can knock down a three-pointer when it counts.

Amisha, a junior Gophers commit, and sophomore sister Ashna teamed up for 40 points in the Irish’s semifinal win over Mayo, and Carpentier grabbed a 11-point, 12-rebound double-double.

Rosemount also finished runner-up in 1988, in addition to 2021’s loss to Chaska. Trips to state in 2022 and 2024 came up short of a title game.

“I remember going to the summer camps. We obviously know those girls [from 2021], and they’re amazing players and even better people,” Amisha, another All-Minnesota honoree, said. “We knew when we were watching them that we wanted to have the same goal and same dreams they had, so hopefully Saturday, we can accomplish that.”

They key to beating an experienced contender like Hopkins? “Handle the pressure,” Orr said.

“Orr has put a lot of big games on our schedule, so no stadium, no crowd is too big for us,” Amisha said. This season’s big games, however, haven’t included Hopkins — until now. “We’re ready for this moment... We know we’ve got each other’s back.”