Country Day Will Play for 9th Title
March 22, 2013
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – Detroit Country Day coach Kurt Keener said he doesn’t get hung up on numbers, like the ninth MHSAA title his team could claim Saturday.
For this group of Yellowjackets, it would be the first. And that’s what counts most of all.
Country Day has come to Breslin Center and left without a championship the last two seasons. But for the first time since winning Class B in 2010, the Yellowjackets will play in the championship game – thanks to a 73-42 Semifinal win Friday over Cadillac.
“It would mean everything to me,” Country Day senior Austin Price said. “The last two years we came up here expecting to win and fell short. It would be great to end on a high note and win my last game as a high school basketball player.”
Top-ranked Country Day will face either Wyoming Godwin Heights or Detroit Community for the title at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
In terms of Finals experience, few programs could sit on further ends of the spectrum.
While Country Day is a Breslin regular, Cadillac (21-5) made its first appearance in an MHSAA Semifinal.
Country Day’s last two Finals weekend visits ended with Semifinals losses to eventual champion
Lansing Sexton. But these Yellowjackets have a different look than some of their most recent teams, with a smaller lineup and a style Keener tells his players should be more track meet than golf match.
That speed became tough for Cadillac to handle immediately, as Country Day (24-3) jumped to a 22-10 lead by the end of the first quarter. The Vikings committed nine turnovers during the first eight minutes.
But they wouldn’t be run off. Cadillac pulled within 26-20 midway through the second quarter.
“At 26-20 we had the game where we wanted it,” Cadillac coach Jeff McDonald said. “We wanted it to be close and give ourselves a puncher’s chance.”
But they ran out of punches soon after, as Country Day went on a 14-2 run and never led by fewer than 10 points over the final 18 minutes.
Junior Edmond Sumner led the Yellowjackets with 30 points on 9 of 15 shooting, and also had six steals. Senior Mory Diane added 11 points.
Of Cadillac’s 26 turnovers, 21 were Country Day steals.
“Defensively, they don’t make mistakes. And obviously they like an uptempo game. They like to gamble on defense,” Vikings senior Nick Paquet said. “We like to slow it down, make it a halfcourt game. We allowed ourselves to play a little faster than we wanted to, and that hurt us.”
Paquet led Cadillac with 18 points and four steals. Junior Jalen Brooks added 15 points and a game-high seven rebounds.
PHOTOS: (Top) Detroit Country Day's Edmond Sumner pushes the ball upcourt Friday while Cadillac's Jalen Brooks (2) and Lewis Finch (15) give chase. (Middle) Brooks makes a strong move to the basket during the Semifinal. (Photos by Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
Senior-Dominated Falcons Finish Freeland Careers in Best Way Imaginable
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
March 14, 2026
EAST LANSING – Not many teams had a sense of urgency to win it all as big as Freeland’s this season.
And Saturday night, they capped off a run to a title that went well beyond just this year.
Led by its 12 seniors – and two senior student managers – Freeland claimed its first Boys Basketball Finals title, defeating Hudsonville Unity Christian 42-32 in the Division 2 championship game at the Breslin Center.
“To go back home with this big thing (trophy) and do something that no Freeland boys team has ever done, win a state championship, is pretty special,” senior guard Wilson Huckeby said. “Not just for me, but for all these guys, I couldn’t have done it without them.”
Everyone that saw the floor for the Falcons in the Final will graduate, and they’ll go out in the best way they could imagine.
The game started slowly, as the Crusaders led 6-4 after the first quarter with the teams going a combined 4-of-19 from the field.
Some space opened up during the second quarter, but not much, as Unity Christian held a 17-15 lead at the half.
It was Freeland, though, that started to find a groove toward the end of the third quarter and beginning of the fourth, going ahead by 13 with under three minutes to play.
“In the locker room, you walked in and it was just poised and composed,” Freeland coach John Fattal said. “Everyone knew in that locker room what the second half was going to look like. Everyone knew in our locker room what the belief looked like. Everyone understood that these guys were going to handle pressure, were going to make free throws, they were going to handle everything that Unity Christian threw at them, everything the environment threw at them, and they were just poised and composed the whole second half.”
The run was highlighted by 3-pointers from Tristan Comer and Connor Lasceski on back-to-back possessions, stretching a three-point lead to nine.
“Obviously I’m extremely confident in the shot,” said Comer, a 6-foot-6, 260-pound center who will play offensive line at Michigan State next year. “But I gotta give it to my teammates for setting me up with the perfect pass. I’ve only been able to develop a shot like that because of Coach Fattal and how he runs his practices and how he teaches when to take those shots.”
Comer finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds for the Falcons (26-3), while Huckeby had 12 points, six rebounds and four steals. Senior Cooper Wagner had five points and six assists, and Lasceski had six points.
“Every shot (Huckeby) made was contested,” Unity Christian coach Scott Soodsma said. “We kind of screwed up a little right before half. We went to a zone and all of the sudden I think we forgot and left that kid open. He’s a great player. If you would have told me that Huckeby and Comer had 24 total, one of those could score 24 on their own. So, yeah, it was just one of those nights where I thought our defense didn’t let us down and it was right there. I thought we just weren’t able to put the basketball in the basket.”
Jack Kamminga led Unity Christian (25-4) with 14 points and five rebounds.
Unity Christian lost senior guard Brogan Sherd early in the third quarter to a leg injury. He was carried back to the locker room and returned on crutches to watch the end of the game. Owen VanderWaal was also limited because of an injury.
“We were down a little horsepower and we had a hard time scoring, that was the issue,” Soodsma said. “Those are our top two leading scorers and both of them are down on the bench. I thought Jack really stepped up and made a couple key baskets. (Kyler) Berghuis did a great job on Huckeby fighting over all those screens. But we couldn’t score. If you would have told me we were going to hold them to 42 points, I’m thinking we win that ball game by 10. I thought we’d get to 55, probably. But, tonight, it just wasn’t meant to be.”
PHOTOS (Top) Freeland’s Wilson Huckeby attempts to cut between a pair of Unity Christian defenders during the Division 2 Final on Saturday. (Middle) Unity’s Kyler Berghuis (3) dribbles into an opening just inside the arc. (Photos by Adam Sheehan/Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)