Benton Harbor Aims to Add to Legacy
March 23, 2018
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – Benton Harbor is wearing the weight of history, with the last name of Don Farnum across the chests of the team’s warm-up T-shirts.
But this season’s Tigers have been aiming to add to their school’s long legacy of boys basketball success – and become its first MHSAA champion in the sport since Farnum led the team to back-to-back titles in 1964 and 1965.
Benton Harbor earned another championship opportunity Friday at the Breslin Center with a 60-49 Class B Semifinal win over River Rouge.
The victory sent the Tigers back to the title game for the 11th time and first since 2014.
“It’s a lot of weight, but we don’t let it get to our heads,” Benton Harbor senior guard Dennie Brown said. “We know this is a great group. We’ve had chemistry since back in middle school. So we knew coming into the season it would be something magical if we’d play the way we’ve been playing our whole lives.
“So it’s not much weight, just motivation.”
Benton Harbor will face Grand Rapids Catholic Central in Saturday’s 6:45 p.m. finale.
The Tigers (26-1) fell to New Haven 78-49 during last season’s Semifinals, as the Rockets went on to win their first Class B title.
A number of Benton Harbor’s players are the same this time around, but this is a new team.
Senior guards Shawn Hopkins (18 points, 13 rebounds) and Elijah Baxter (17 points) and sophomore forward Carlos Johnson (nine points, nine rebounds, six blocks) also started last season and set the tone Friday.
“It’s been a dream season. We’ve gone 27-1, and we had a bad half against Hazel Park – we should be undefeated,” said Benton Harbor coach Corey Sterling, noting his team’s lone loss 77-70 to the Class A Vikings. “But we want that ring tomorrow.
“This senior group earned it. They worked hard in the offseason. We lost last year … and they did everything I asked them to do. And they’re great character kids off the court with high GPAs; I’m so proud of them.”
Facing 14-time champ River Rouge, Benton Harbor saw another team both rich in history and also back at the Semifinals for the second straight season. But Rouge brought only one returning starter to East Lansing.
“It was a great experience to be here, especially as I have a young team,” River Rouge coach Mark White said. “After coming here last year and losing a lot of key players, just the magnitude of experiences, it was great for us. It was great for us, a great achievement to make it here, to play a really good team.”
White then added: “I’m not in the excuse-making business, but I’m looking forward to our guys being seniors.”
White’s young squad kept up with Sterling’s veterans for a half, and the score was deadlocked 25-25 at the break. But starting with a Johnson basket with 2:49 to play in the third quarter, the Tigers put together an 11-4 run to run out the quarter with a 10-point lead. The advantage got as large as 14 but no smaller than eight the rest of the way.
Junior guard Nigel Colvin led River Rouge (23-2) with 15 points, six rebounds and three steals while coming off the bench. Junior guard Donovan Freeman added 12 points, and freshman forward Legend Geeter added eight points and nine rebounds in 14 minutes of sub time.
Brown added eight points and four assists for the Tigers, and senior guard Devan Nichols had six points and five rebounds as the starting five scored all but two of the team’s points.
The “Farnum Boyz” shirts worn by the Tigers are more a dedication to their home court, the Don Farnum Gymnasium, than to the man himself. But a first championship in more than a half century surely would bring a lot of pride to the building and the many who have shined playing in it.
“Coming in, we just knew we had to stay focused,” Baxter said. “We have a goal, and we’ve had this goal since we were young. Coming into this game, we wanted to prove a point we didn’t prove last year.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Benton Harbor’s Carlos Johnson gets past three defenders on the way to the basket Friday. (Middle) Johnson (11) gets a hand up as River Rouge’s Nigel Colvin drives.
All-Time Leading Scorer Allen Ready to Set Pace for Wayne Memorial's Title Pursuit
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
February 20, 2026
WAYNE — Jaylohn Allen insisted making such history wasn’t one of his goals when he started his varsity basketball career as a freshman.
Given that, it made the moment all the more special last week.
During a game against Harvey Thornton (Ill.) on Valentine’s Day, Allen and the Wayne Memorial community loved seeing a 30-year-old record broken by Allen, who became the boys basketball program’s all-time leading scorer.
Allen surpassed the 1,748 career points scored by former Michigan State player Lorenzo Guess, who finished his career in 1996.
“To be the all-time leading scorer at Wayne Memorial High actually wasn’t one of my goals coming in as a freshman,” Allen said. “And honestly I didn’t really think I was going to pass it because 1,700 points is a lot of points, per se. To do that as a kid who grew up with many accomplishments and dreams I wanted to have was a joy. I thought 1,000 points was surreal, but the record meant so much more.”
Signed to play in college for Toledo, Allen certainly has meant a lot to Wayne Memorial over the past four years, and he hopes to make even more history for the Zebras over the next few weeks.
Allen is averaging nearly 23 points a game this season and is determined to try and get Wayne Memorial back to the Division 1 championship game, where it loss last year to East Lansing.
When the Zebras accepted the Finals runner-up trophy, they obviously had immediate reason for optimism given Allen and fellow backcourt mate Carlos Medlock – a Michigan State signee – were only juniors.
But Medlock threw a major wrinkle into Wayne Memorial’s title ambitions when he decided over the offseason to transfer to a prep school in Missouri.
“I found out maybe a week before he posted on social media,” Allen said of Medlock’s decision. “There were rumors about it, but I didn’t really think he was going to leave. It was a shock, but I was still ready to attack the senior season regardless of what happened and look forward to the senior season with or without him.”
Allen has certainly done that and more.
Instead of pouting or looking to leave himself, Allen treated Medlock’s departure as a chance to prove he was a worthy Mr. Basketball Award candidate this winter.
Over the summer, he worked to get in terrific shape and continued to not only hone his on-court talents, but became an even more vocal leader to younger players coming back.
“It put me into a bigger role and let people see I can score the ball even more than I’ve been doing the past three years,” Allen said. “It put a fire in me and some motivation that I could be more of the man with the ball.”
One person not surprised that Allen adapted so well without Medlock was Wayne Memorial head coach Steve Brooks.
“He’s pretty much always been the man; he just hadn’t been the leading scorer all the time,” Brooks said.
Allen said there were adjustments playing without his running mate of the last three years, especially when trying to get out in transition.
“Being on the floor and not seeing (Medlock) on the other side of the court and being able to swing it to him — it was just a connection in transition or any other core set that we had,” Allen said. “(The adjustments were) just realizing he’s not on the court and having to utilize my other teammates and making sure they are getting everything they need.”
There was a major scare in December, just before the holiday break, when Allen left a game with a knee injury after he took a charge.
“We thought he was lost for the year,” Brooks said.
But the injury was only a bone bruise, and Allen missed just 13 days and has been an unstoppable force since.
To Brooks, it’s obvious who should be Mr. Basketball.
“Mr. Basketball traditionally is for what you’ve done for your career and not just for a season,” Brooks said. “Over his career, he’s at 19 points a game. Him and Medlock both had 1,000 career points before Christmas of their junior year.”
While Mr. Basketball would be nice and the scoring record is an honor, there is one main purpose for Allen, and that is to get another shot at the Division 1 title that eluded Wayne Memorial last year.
The Zebras enter tonight’s Kensington Lakes Activities Association championship game 18-3 and carrying a 10-game winning streak.
“I want them to get there more than me,” Allen said of his teammates. “I want them to show me how much they want to be there so when it comes down to it, we’re ready for it.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Wayne Memorial’s Jaylohn Allen (5) makes his way through his teammates during introductions before last season’s Division 1 Final at Breslin Center. (Middle) Teammates help Allen up from the floor during the Zebras’ Semifinal win.