Breslin Bound: Girls Report Week 6
January 11, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
As we head toward the midpoint of this girls basketball season, a few intriguing teams are making us keep an eye out thanks to wins over opponents who traditionally don’t lose much.
Read on for the details on why Detroit Renaissance and Durand have become teams to watch – plus a look at 14 more that stood out not only over the last week, but during the first six of the season so far.
Each week during the regular season, we’ll glance at four teams from each class that have caught our attention. Results and records below are based on schedules posted at MHSAA.com.
Class A
Detroit Renaissance (8-1) – The Phoenix could be Detroit’s best for the first time since finishing Class A runner-up in 2011; Renaissance’s only loss is to undefeated Bay City John Glenn, and it’s beaten usual Detroit leader Detroit Martin Luther King (68-65 on Dec. 17) in addition to strong teams Detroit Henry Ford, Farmington Hills Harrison and Manistee.
Grosse Pointe North (6-0) – The Norsemen have finished a few wins above or below .500 every season of this decade and exactly even a year ago, but have won all of their games by double digits so far and are more than halfway to equaling last season’s 11 victories.
Utica Eisenhower (8-0) – The Eagles came off a solid 15-8 and second-place league finish a year ago, but have stormed to this start with six wins by at least 12 points including their first in Macomb Area Conference White play over Clinton Township Chippewa Valley on Friday.
St. Johns (6-2) – The Redwings broke into the Capital Area Activities Conference Red hunt coming back off a December loss to leader DeWitt by handing former co-leader Haslett its first loss, 52-40 on Friday, after losing to the Vikings by 33 and 19 last season.
Class B
Ann Arbor Gabriel Richard (6-0) – The Fighting Irish have risen steadily the last three seasons and tied Macomb Lutheran North for the Catholic League AA title last season; they’ve got the upper hand this time after downing Lutheran North 43-35 last week.
Center Line (6-1) – The Panthers are regulars lately at the top of their Macomb Area Conference division and look like potential favorites in the Gold this winter with two games holding opponents to single digits and two more keeping teams to fewer than 20 points.
Durand (6-2) – Not only are the Railroaders off to their best start since 2010-11, but they handed annual power Goodrich its first league loss since at least that long ago and now have a nice early advantage in the Genesee Area Conference Red standings.
Perry (5-0) – The Ramblers under coach Tim Beebe are 39-10 over the last two-plus seasons and have a game on the rest of the Greater Lansing Activities Conference pack – plus three two-point victories, including last week’s over above-mentioned Durand.
Class C
Adrian Madison (7-0) – The Trojans are working toward their fifth straight Tri-County Conference championship and own a one-game lead on two second-place teams including Morenci after Friday’s 59-28 win over the Bulldogs. No opponent has come closer than 10 points so far.
Detroit Cristo Rey (6-1) – One more win this season will give Cristo Rey its most since 2011-12, and all six this winter have come by double digits and with five opponents scoring 18 or fewer points.
Marlette (6-1) – The Red Raiders already earned a big boost in the Greater Thumb Conference East, bouncing back from their lone loss to beat reigning champion Sandusky before the break; the next big matchup is Friday against league co-leader Harbor Beach.
Ypsilanti Arbor Prep (8-1) – A Class C semifinalist last season, Arbor Prep again has loaded the schedule to prepare for another run and owns a nice win over Manistee, with its only loss to Class A Ann Arbor Huron. Waterford Kettering, Saginaw Nouvel, Bay City John Glenn, Bloomfield Hills Marian and Detroit Country Day are among opponents coming up.
Class D
Detroit Public Safety Academy (5-1) – This is the Eagles’ first season of MHSAA Tournament eligibility, and they’re looking like an interesting possibility to do something in Class D; last week’s win came over Dearborn Advanced Tech, which beat above-mentioned Cristo Rey, and Public Safety also owns a victory over Class B Detroit Osborn.
Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart (8-0) – Keyed by dominating center Averi Gamble, Sacred Heart again is navigating a strong nonleague schedule in addition to some good competition in the Mid-State Activities Conference; she had eight of her team’s 22 points in last week’s four-point win over league foe and previously-undefeated Carson City-Crystal. The Irish beat Gaylord St. Mary (6-2) earlier in the week.
St. Joseph Michigan Lutheran (5-1) – The Titans did open last week with a 52-47 loss to once-defeated Class B Buchanan, but came back to beat rival St. Joseph Lake Michigan Catholic 46-41 and take a two-game lead in the Berrien-Cass-St. Joseph Conference White.
Stephenson (7-0) – After losing five of their final seven to finish last season 10-10, the Eagles have bounced back well with six wins by at least 16 points plus a 56-53 victory last week over Class B Gladstone.
PHOTO: A St. Louis shooter prepares to launch; the Class C Sharks are 5-0 this season. (Click for more photos from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Edison Advances to 1st Hoops Final
March 16, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – When Monique Brown heard voices as she walked past her players’ hotel rooms late Wednesday night, she was a little concerned.
Maybe she’d made a mistake bringing her young team to East Lansing the night before the biggest game in school history.
But as they have other times before, Detroit Edison Public School Academy’s players proved their coach wrong, coming out Thursday afternoon anything but sluggish in earning an even more memorable opportunity.
DEPSA – with nine freshman, a sophomore and two juniors on its roster – looked neither tired nor inexperienced in handing annual Breslin visitor Flint Hamady a 54-31 defeat in the day’s first Class C Semifinal.
“We got there late, and we couldn’t sleep. We were just talking about what we can do,” Pioneers sophomore guard Rickea Jackson said. “They came knocking on our doors … they took our phones. We couldn’t do anything but talk.”
DEPSA (20-5) will face Pewamo-Westphalia in Saturday’s Class C Final at 4 p.m. It will be the Pioneers' first appearance in an MHSAA girls basketball championship game.
As much as they had to discuss after midnight the evening before, Jackson and her teammates made a loud statement with their play to tip off this Finals weekend.
They held Hamady to 8.3-percent shooting from the floor during the first half in building a 28-8 lead. The Hawks did recover to shoot an improved 36 percent during the second half, but DEPSA made 49 percent of its shots for the game – and freshman Gabrielle Elliott had nine field goals, only one fewer than Hamady as a team.
Elliott finished with 24 points and Jackson had 16 and eight rebounds as they combined to drop 16 of 26 shots from the floor – not bad for a couple of underclassmen on the biggest stage for the first time.
“We’ve never done that to a team like Flint Hamady, and I really commend my young group,” Brown said. “They’ve been preparing for this, we’ve talked about it, and as we’ve went through the season … I told them it was all in preparation for today. I always told them I don’t want to hear people say we’re talented; I want to hear them say how hard we play.”
Brown, also the school’s athletic director, had to know what she had coming this winter and scheduled appropriately. DEPSA opened 9-0, with a one-point win over Southfield Arts & Technology, a Class A semifinalist this weekend.
But the No. 5-ranked Pioneers then ran into a tough spot, losing three of its next five to Class A power Detroit Martin Luther King and Class B contenders Detroit Country Day and Ypsilanti Arbor Prep. Sandwiched among those defeats, however, was a 43-39 win over Hamady, which made its third Semifinal appearance of this decade Thursday and finished Class C runner-up in 2015.
That first Hawks loss to DEPSA on Jan. 31 was Hamady’s third straight after losing senior guard Krystal Rice for the season to a knee injury. Without Rice – who will continue her career at Indiana State University – the Hawks still managed to navigate a tournament run that included handing top-ranked Sandusky a 38-36 loss in the Regional Final.
“We didn’t give up on the season,” Hamady coach Keith Smith said. “We spent a lot of time watching film, spent a lot of time drilling on fundamentals, trying to tweak the little things we were not doing well and trying to be concerned on the details. (But) it caught up with us today to not have her, that extra senior who had played in a state final.”
Senior guard Deajah Cofield and freshman center Aryana Naylor both scored 10 points to lead Hamady, Cofield also totaling five steals and Naylor grabbing 10 rebounds.
With Rice out, Cofield was the only senior starter for Hamady, which finished the regular season unranked but ended up with a final record of 19-6.
Smith said he hadn't seen a team as talented as DEPSA with that many young players since his 2009 Class C championship team.
The Pioneers didn’t play like mostly underclassmen Thursday, just a team with a little bit of a chip on their collective shoulders and the talent to dominate the next two to three seasons as well.
“(People) said we’d lose to Sandusky, and they didn’t make it to us, and they said we’d lose to Blissfield by two,” Jackson said, noting the 16-point Quarterfinal win over the No. 10 Royals. “We’re just tired of people doubting us. We’re so young, we don’t have any seniors, and we just want to prove everyone wrong.”
The Girls Basketball Finals are presented by Sparrow Health System.
PHOTOS: (Top) DEPSA's Gabrielle Elliott pushes the ball upcourt during her team's Class C Semifinal win. (Middle) Rickea Jackson works to get a hand on a shot by Flint Hamady's Danielle Tipton.