Iron Mountain Dream Season Continues
March 14, 2019
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – “Living this dream.”
Iron Mountain coach Bucky Johnson put special emphasis on those words Thursday afternoon.
He may have been pointing out the present tense of “living” after his Mountaineers ended the season for 2018 Class C champion Detroit Edison. Or maybe the “dream” as his team earned a shot to play for its first MHSAA boys basketball championship since winning the Upper Peninsula-only bracket in 1939.
Iron Mountain faced a tall task in the day’s first Division 3 Semifinal, even for a team that hasn’t tasted defeat this season. But the Mountaineers held off Edison 60-57 in their first Semifinals appearance since 1994.
“There’s not a lot of U.P. teams that get to come down here and experience this,” Iron Mountain junior guard Foster Wonders said. “To come down here and win too is something special. We take pride in that. It’s been unbelievable.”
Iron Mountain (27-0) will face also-unbeaten Pewamo-Westphalia in Saturday’s 4:30 p.m. championship game.
The Mountaineers have enjoyed quite a visit to East Lansing. On Wednesday, they spent an hour with 1973 graduate Tom Izzo, then watched his Michigan State team practice Thursday morning.
And all of that set up the Semifinal they weren’t necessarily expected to win – despite the perfect record they brought downstate. Edison (18-9) had more losses than all but one team making the trip to Breslin this weekend, but all seven to in-state opponents had come against Division 1 and 2 teams, and the Pioneers had just toppled top-ranked Flint Beecher in their Quarterfinal.
Edison then led most of the first quarter, carrying a seven-point advantage into the second.
“In the U.P. you don’t really see any athletes like that, with the length and athleticism they had,” Iron Mountain junior guard Marcus Johnson said.
But he and his teammates had a few surprises for Edison as well.
First was a game plan to attack the paint, which resulted in two first-quarter fouls for Pioneers’ 6-foot-6 junior Bryce George. He ended up limited to only 15 minutes for the game, with eight points and six rebounds that could’ve been a lot more with more time on the floor. He had four points and four rebounds before picking up that second foul 5:11 into the game.
Next, Iron Mountain played only six players, and four all 32 minutes. Edison had 12 players with at least four minutes of action, but couldn’t wear the Mountaineers down.
Not surprising was how Iron Mountain won. Johnson was averaging 23.3 points per game entering this week, and sophomore guard Foster Wonders was averaging 23.9. Wonders had 28 on Thursday, making nearly half his shots from the floor and 9-of-10 free-throw tries. Johnson had 23 points, with five 3-pointers and perfection on six free-throw attempts.
“One thing we knew about this team is they were winners. If a team has gone all season not losing a basketball, game, you have to respect them to the utmost,” Edison coach Brandon Neely said. “These guys play six guys, and one guy played four minutes. The thing about this team is they play so well as a team because they know where guys are. Teams like that are a great example to learn from.
“They played like champions.”
Sophomore guard Ralph Johnson came off the bench to lead Edison with 14 points, and senior forward Brian Taylor was held to 11 points and seven rebounds. Taylor, the team’s leading scorer coming into this week, was also its lone senior this season.
Edison shot a game-high 47 percent from the floor during the fourth quarter and got within 45-44 with 3:26 to play. But Iron Mountain’s “makers” – as Bucky Johnson called them, spinning off the “shooters shoot” phrase – had connected on 64 percent of their shots during the third quarter and made 50 percent during the fourth, including both shots from the floor and 10 straight free throws after Edison pulled within a point.
“Coach Izzo told us some people like it, some people love it and some people live it,” Marcus Johnson said. “And we want to live it. It’s an awesome feeling to get to the championship, and we want to get it home.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Iron Mountain celebrates Thursday its first Semifinal win since 1939. (Middle) Jake Dumais (32) battles Edison’s Brian Taylor for a loose ball.
P-W Withstands Lovejoy's Record-Approaching Performance to Complete Historic Run
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
March 14, 2026
EAST LANSING – Pewamo-Westphalia overcame one of the best scoring performances in Finals history Saturday to claim the Division 3 boys basketball title.
Arts & Technology Academy of Pontiac got 41 points from sophomore Lewis Lovejoy, but the Pirates made enough stops during the biggest moments to come away with a 61-57 win at the Breslin Center.
“That game was exactly as we expected, just a great game between two great basketball teams,” P-W coach Dominic Schneider said. “What can you say about Mr. Lovejoy? I mean, that guy, he’s a stud at all three levels. But, I will say our guys did the job and became state champions because they believed in each other and believed in what we do as a program. That was a perfect example of team ball out there. I’m so proud of our guys.”
It was the second title in program history and first since 2019 for the Pirates, who were making their second-straight appearance at Finals weekend.
The senior class that brought them back included four starters – Nolan George, Tyler Spitzley, Trent Piggott and Grady Eklund, as well as sixth man Ty Thelen.
“They never once wavered and never once batted an eye,” Schneider said. “Sometimes you bring up freshmen or sophomores and things don’t go well, but it never was an issue. They took the sophomores under their wing, and obviously they helped us today. The senior class stayed together. Yeah, you have some great players but you have some players who don’t play as many minutes, and it never was an issue. They always wanted to be leaders and they wanted to win, and they did that in the best way possible.”
Eklund led the way in his final game at P-W, scoring 26 points while adding nine rebounds and four assists. Piggott had a double-double with 11 points and 12 rebounds, and sophomore Logan Farmer added 14 points.
The balance was in contrast to ATAP, which ran through Lovejoy, and for good reason – it was working.
Lovejoy’s 41 points were the seventh most in MHSAA Finals history. He shot 50 percent (14 of 28) from the field, and hit six 3-pointers, one away from tying the Finals record.
But the performance was no consolation following a second-straight loss in the Division 3 Final.
“It don’t mean nothing; we lost,” Lovejoy said. “If we won, I’d be on top of the world, but we lost. None of this matters. Not one point matters.”
Devonte Grandison added seven points and seven rebounds for the Lions, while Jaiden Price also had seven points.
Lovejoy had 35 through three quarters, as the Lions took a one-point lead into the fourth. But with Farmer switching onto the assignment, things slowed down for Lovejoy.
“I will say, once we switched Logan onto him – and Ty Thelen and Logan George did a heck of a job, that’s quite a task to take on – but I think throwing a different look at him helped a lot,” Schneider said. “Logan’s length and giving him a third defender that he had to go against, that helped a lot with that. I know how bull-headed this kid can be, and I know he wasn’t going to back down from a big challenge.”
Schneider was right, as Farmer was ready to take on the task.
“I saw he had 35, and I tried to keep him at 35,” Farmer said. “It didn’t work. He stops so quick and he has that back-up game, so he’s always keeping you on your toes. So it’s hard to stay with him. But when he raised up, I just tried to contest the best I could.”
Farmer also hit the game-sealing free throws with nine seconds remaining and was nearby when ATAP’s final 3-point attempt missed.
Lovejoy’s shooting kept ATAP in the game in the first half, as he scored 18 points over the opening 16 minutes. He was 4-of-7 from 3-point range in the second quarter, scoring 14 of his team’s 16 points in the frame.
The Lions were just 4-of-13 from behind the arc in the first half and 8-of-29 from the field overall.
That, and a 6-2 edge in turnovers forced, offset a hot-shooting start from the Pirates, who had hit 10 of their first 18 shots, including better than 64 percent of their 2-pointers. They held an 18-4 advantage in points in the paint.
Lovejoy’s heroics won over the Hudsonville Unity Christian students who had started filling in for their school’s Division 2 Final.
“You’re him, zero!” they yelled, eventually coming all the way over to the ATAP side and starting a “Let’s go Lions” chant.
But in the end, it was the Pirates student section making the most noise.
“The bottom line is the better team won,” ATAP acting coach Zachary Kelso said. “They made stops and they made plays when they needed to, and we didn’t. That’s the bottom line.”
PHOTOS (Top) Pewamo-Westphalia’s Logan Farmer gets up a shot over ATAP’s Lewis Lovejoy (0) on Saturday. (Middle) Lovejoy finishes a fastbreak with a layup. (Photos by Adam Sheehan/Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)