Class A Final: Trojans ring up a title
March 24, 2012
EAST LANSING – Every time Draymond Green visited a Saginaw basketball practice this season, he reminded the current Trojans of the same thing:
The Michigan State and former Saginaw star has two Class A championship rings. They had none.
And he brought that up one more time when he went to dinner with the team Friday night.
He can’t tease them anymore. Saginaw – top-ranked entering the tournament – ended it that way with a 54-42 win over Rockford in Saturday’s Class A Final.
“Now I don’t gotta hear Draymond Green’s mouth saying we don’t have a ring. Now I can take my ring to his face and say, ‘Yes, now we do,’” Saginaw senior Davario Gaines said. “He said (Friday), ‘You’re happy just to be here,’ since we won yesterday. We said, ‘No, we’re not happy to be here.’ We hadn’t won anything yet.
“So now we won.”
The championship is Saginaw’s sixth, and first since 2008, when Green led the Trojans to their second straight. But this title-winner had a different look from those that won under previous Saginaw coaches Lou Dawkins and Marshall Thomas.
Those two sat behind the Trojans’ bench Saturday as first-year coach Julian Taylor guided a team that didn’t have a Green-esque star, but a number of contributors who didn’t get down during the streakiest play of the weekend.
Saginaw jumped out to a 7-0 lead. Rockford countered with 18 straight points. The Trojans came back from that with an 18-6 run to lead 25-24 at halftime.
The score was knotted 40-40 with 5:01 to play. But Saginaw finished on a 14-2 run, scoring the final 11 points of the game.
“You try to control runs and limit them,” Rockford coach Nick Allen said. “Saginaw is a very good team, and obviously we didn’t do a very good job of it.”
The Rams did hit 10 3-pointers, tying for fourth-most in MHSAA boys basketball championship game history. They made 55 percent of their first-half tries from beyond the arc.
But the Trojans turned up the pressure to full-court, and limited mistakes at a level rarely seen. Saginaw had just five turnovers and only nine fouls – and Rockford didn’t get to shoot a free throw.
Senior guard Travontis Richardson led the Trojans with 13 points and junior Julian Henderson had 12. But seven players scored at least four points and six grabbed at least six rebounds.
“We don’t have to have a big player. As long as we have parts to the team, they balance out the floor,” Gaines said. “We played D that they haven’t seen before, probably. We fought hard.”
So did Rockford, just to reach Breslin. Allen also was in his first season coaching after taking over for longtime coach Steve Majerle, who is battling Parkinson’s disease. The Rams entered the postseason unranked, but won seven games to finish 22-6.
Junior Chase Fairchild scored 14 points off the bench Saturday to lead the team for the second straight game. He’s one of seven juniors who won’t be nearly as big a surprise if they make a run again in 2013.
“No one expected us to go all the way to the state championship game,” Rockford junior guard Chad Carlson said. “We got here and played together as a team. It was a great season for us. We just couldn’t get it done.”
Click for box score or to watch the game and press conferences at MHSAA.tv.
PHOTOS: (Top) Saginaw players embrace each other at midcourt after clinching the 2011-12 Class A championship. (Middle) Saginaw sophomore Joseph Williams-Powell (42) sends up a shot above the reach of Rockford senior Ivy Johnson. (See more at Terry McNamara Photography.)
Wayne Memorial's Moment Arrives as Zebras Pull Away for Historic Win
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
March 14, 2025
EAST LANSING – Carlos Medlock Jr. makes no excuses for wanting the ball at crunch time.
The Wayne Memorial junior guard enjoys his dual role with his team, including shooting the ball from almost any angle at any time. Whatever the defense gives him, Medlock Jr. said he's happy to take it.
Case in point was Wayne Memorial's 66-49 win over Flint Carmen-Ainsworth in Friday's second Division 1 Semifinal at the Breslin Center.
With the Zebras nursing a tenuous five-point lead midway through the third quarter, the 6-foot, 170-pound Medlock hit a short jumper, a layup, a free throw, a pullup jumper and a reverse layup during a span of less than three minutes.
The lead ballooned to as much as 52-38 a minute into the fourth quarter as Wayne Memorial earned a trip – the program's first – to Saturday's 12:15 p.m. championship game against East Lansing.
As much as Medlock Jr. admits to happily possessing a shooter's mentality – he's averaging nearly 25 points per game – he also takes pride in providing open looks for teammates. Medlock Jr. wound up tossing in 29 points on 11-of-24 shooting while adding eight rebounds and six assists.
"Even when they're trying to stop me, that means my teammates are available," he said. "I want the ball, but it's about helping others, too. When I'm hot, I want the ball. If I'm not, I'll get it to Austin (Tory) or someone open."
Tory, who complements Medlock Jr. from the other guard spot, added 14 points and six rebounds.
Wayne Memorial improved to 25-3, while Carmen-Ainsworth finished 22-6.
Zebras coach Steve Brooks said Medlock Jr. is a key member of a team which, in some cases, has been together since middle school. He said the program takes pride in that it hasn't been aided by transfers. The Zebras, he said, are pure homegrown.
"We're here because we have fun," he said. "I'm happy for our seniors; they've bought into this. They're Wayne kids who've put in the work."
Wayne Memorial led 30-25 at the half, then salted the game away with a 20-13 third quarter run. The Zebras outscored Carmen-Ainsworth 16-11 in the fourth quarter.
Wayne Memorial senior center Talan Clark said because the team has basically been intact for four years, there has been talk of reaching Finals weekend.
"We've worked four years for this moment," he said. "No transfers have come in. It's just been us who've put in the work. After all the work we've put in in the summer, this is what we wanted to do. We all had the same goal."
Carmen-Ainsworth was led by Donovan Hamlin's 15 points and eight rebounds. MarQuinn Weston II had 11 points.
Cavaliers coach Jay Witham said his team simply didn't do the things which led to winning four tournament games over the last two weeks by fewer than nine points. Carman-Ainsworth shot 44.7 percent from the floor, but missed nine of its 3-point attempts while turning the ball over 17 times.
"They are a talented team, and their guards are tough to defend," said Witham, whose club finished fourth in the Saginaw Valley League. "But for whatever reason we turned the ball over and took (bad) shots we don't normally take, and that hurt us. We had to settle for (longer) shots instead of getting to the rim.
"It happens. Whether it was playing on this stage in a big moment, I thought we were focused. It just wasn't our day."
PHOTOS (Top) Wayne Memorial’s Antwaun Williams (10) guards Flint Carman-Ainsworth’s MarQuinn Weston II during Friday’s Division 1 Semifinal. (Middle) Carman-Ainsworth’s Kendreyas White (10) gets up a shot as Wayne’s Joshua Dennis (33) goes for a block. (Photos by Adam Sheehan/Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)