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.
Promise Kept, Dream Continues for Morenci
March 26, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – Every summer, Morenci boys basketball coach Jim Bauer comes up with a catchy, aspiration-filled slogan for his kids basketball camp T-shirts.
Pathway to Breslin. Small Town, Big Time. “Breslin is on every shirt,” Bauer said, “but deep down, you’re thinking, am I ever going to get there?”
Three years ago, a freshman named Austin Sandusky made a promise he and his teammates kept Thursday. And now they’ve got an opportunity to carry it one step farther.
Morenci will play for its first MHSAA championship after handing Waterford Our Lady its only loss this season, 53-52, in a Class D Semifinal on Michigan State University's home floor.
“We started in fourth grade, and it seemed every tournament we’d be in the championship game,” Sandusky said. “Every year our coaches told us it wasn’t for this championship game, it’s for when we’re juniors and seniors on the varsity level trying to get to the (MHSAA) championship game. We knew they wouldn’t say that unless they truly believed it.”
Morenci (25-2), unranked when this tournament began, will face top-ranked Powers North Central in the 10 a.m. Final on Saturday.
Bauer has coached four 20-win teams over two tenures measuring a decade at Morenci, with this year’s his second straight to reach that milestone win total. But he’s also had three teams finish with sub-.500 records, including only two seasons ago.
No Morenci player measures taller than 6-foot-3, and senior guard Alex Thomas said he and his teammates always knew they’d be a little smaller than their opponents. But the Bulldogs returned four starters after falling to eventual MHSAA runner-up Adrian Lenawee Christian in last season's District Final. Two weeks ago, Morenci won its first Regional title since 1954, and the Semifinal was the first in the program’s history.
But the run nearly ended there – even though the Bulldogs led Thursday for all but 3 minutes and 55 seconds.
They were ahead from the middle of the first quarter until Our Lady senior Nick Robak hit a go-ahead jumper to make the score 38-37 with 7:08 to play.
Morenci took the lead back and pushed it to six points three times, including with 14 seconds remaining. But Robak hit another big shot – a 3 pointer to cut the deficit in half with eight seconds left – and after a steal by junior teammate Adam Kline was fouled on another 3-point attempt with less than a second to go in regulation.
Robak was faced with making all three free throws to tie the score. An 86-percent free-throw shooter, he connected on the first two – but missed the third.
“Layups and free throws, they matter. And they probably came back to bite us in the end,” said Our Lady coach Paul Robak, also Nick’s uncle. “Thirty-two minutes were played, and we lost our opportunity a long time before (the final second). We would’ve never gotten here without the efforts of Nick. … There are lessons in everything, and although we came here to win and not get a lesson, I hope we can find that lesson down the road.”
Robak scored a game-high 21 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to go with four assists. Kline added 12 points and five assists and junior forward Clay Senerius had nine points, 11 rebounds and four assists. But the team made only 6 of 14 free throw attempts and missed some shots from the lane that usually have fallen.
The Semifinal was Our Lady's first since 1993. The Lakers finished with a school record for wins in ending 25-1.
Thomas had 19 points and seven rebounds as the only player in double figures for Morenci. Sandusky added seven points, five rebounds and five assists as all five Bulldogs starters scored at least six points, and eight players saw at least nine minutes of action.
They didn’t play an opponent this season that received votes in the final Associated Press rankings. But they did avenge both of their losses and had won all of their tournament games by at least 12 points before Thursday’s nail-biter made what might’ve seemed like an unrealistic Sandusky dream continue to come true.
“You never discourage a kid from having a dream,” Bauer said. “You go along with it and hope for it.
“That’s what I wanted too.”
Click for the full box score and video from the postgame press conference.
PHOTOS: (Top) Morenci players celebrate their first MHSAA championship game berth. (Middle) Waterford Our Lady’s Nick Robak gets past a defender for an open look Thursday.