When Providence Academy takes to the court at Williams Arena to face Duluth Marshall at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, March 14, in the Class 2A girls basketball state championship, Lions senior point guard Maddyn Greenway will play her final state tournament game against the same team she beat in her very first.

That was back in seventh grade, before she won a record four consecutive state titles with the Lions. When asked what she remembered from that 94-91 Providence quarterfinal win, the Strib Varsity All-Minnesota Player of the Year recalled: “We couldn’t defend a cone if we tried.”

Because, rather than defend a cone, they had to defend a soon-to-be WNBA draft pick.

Duluth Marshall senior Gianna Kneepkens, now a standout shooting guard for the No. 2-ranked UCLA Bruins, scored a state-record 67 points in the Hilltoppers’ loss.

“All the film, we’re like, ‘All right, well, Gianna is a great player. She’s averages 43 a game.’ OK, but who are they really playing?” Providence Academy head coach Conner Goetz said. “And then we saw it firsthand.”

It didn’t matter who they played. “Anything she shot,” Goetz said, “it was going in.”

But for the winning side, middle-schooler Greenway led the Lions with 32 points — a sign of things to come for the player who would set state records in career points, career assists and career tournament points.

“It was the first time I got to see Maddyn in person, not on film,” Hilltoppers head coach C.J. Osuchukwu said. “Her as a seventh-grader, she looked good, but I didn’t think she was, like, really that good, until you actually got on the court.”

On Saturday, there are no doubts about the proven quality of either of the teams’ standout guards. The top-seeded Lions (26-4) will once again have to defend far more than a flimsy plastic cone.

No. 2 Duluth Marshall (24-7), making its championship game debut, had to wait just one season until another player with Kneepkens’ potential walked through its halls and took to the court as a seventh-grader.

Now a sophomore point guard for the Hilltoppers and ESPN’s No. 3-ranked recruit nationwide in the class of 2028, Chloe Johnson and several of her current teammates made the trip west to St. Cloud to watch the Hilltoppers’ 2021 quarterfinal against Providence Academy.

Games were held at neutral sites with limited spectators after a regular season abbreviated and delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

But even in the disappointment of that loss, which followed an abruptly-ended 2020 season — the state tournament was called off before the Hilltoppers could play their semifinal, also against Providence Academy, in their first trip to state in 20 years — Johnson and her teammates were moved.

“It was a super-fun team to watch. I feel like that’s a big reason we even wanted to play for Duluth Marshall, like Gianna and Grace [Kirk] were fun to look up to,” said Johnson, an All-Minnesota honoree. “They were just, like, our biggest role models.”

And now, in a state teeming with talented point guards, the Class 2A state championship will again pit two of the best against one another: speedy, explosive 5-8 Greenway writing the chapter of her final trip to state, and the strong, smooth-shooting 6-foot Johnson writing her first.

Last year, that point-guard matchup was Greenway and the Lions beating Crosby-Ironton and Gophers commit Tori Oehrlein.

This season, Crosby-Ironton’s loss in the Section 7 semifinals helped clear a path for the Hilltoppers to make a well-earned return to state for the first time since 2021. Johnson made sure that open door turned into a run to the title game, scoring 36 points and grabbing 12 rebounds in Duluth Marshall’s state semifinal victory over New London-Spicer.

“As a team, [reaching the championship] was one of our biggest goals,” Johnson said. “I think a lot of people didn’t even have us getting to the state tournament. So it’s really fun to be able to prove who we are and that we belong here.”

That’s something the Lions have left no doubt about over the past half-decade. They’ll try to do it once more with Greenway turning the gears of the Providence engine before she heads to Kentucky.

“It’s emotional,” Greenway said, reflecting on the years since that first tournament appearance. “I look back, and I just was so excited for Providence and everything that I thought I could do.”

That trip to state remains her only one that ended as a runner up, to Albany, rather than as a champion. She’ll try to keep that the case, in her 18th career state tournament game.

“I’ll give it my all,” Greenway said. “One last go-around in this jersey.”