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.)
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.