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.
Bussell Bolstering All-Around Game to Go with Stellar Scoring Skills
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
December 27, 2022
Sophia Bussell doesn’t want to be known just as a shooter.
But it’s hard to ignore her shooting talents.
The Monroe High School sophomore recently set two single-game records for the Trojans – most 3-pointers made in a game with 10 and most points in a game with 36. She’s off to a great start in her career with a lot of games – and shots – to go.
“I personally just love to shoot,” Bussell said. “But I am glad that this season I get to show that I’m more than just a shooter.”
Bussell burst onto the Monroe County basketball scene last season when she joined her sister Olivia, a senior, on the Trojans varsity. Sophia started gaining local attention right from the opening tip. In January, she etched her name in the school record book when she scored 29 points and made a school-record eight 3-pointers at Ypsilanti Lincoln.
This season Lincoln was once again the opponent when Bussell went on her hot streak Dec. 13. Her 3-pointer with six seconds left gave Monroe a 58-56 lead – and a school-record 36 points as her team claimed the victory.
Bussell said Lincoln was in a zone defense, something she rarely sees.
“In the previous games, teams were face-guarding and double-teaming me,” she said. “This was the first team this season who played zone on us. As a shooter, when you see a zone defense, you get excited because it opens up a lot more shots and opportunities to score.”
Bussell didn’t waste any of them.
“My first couple shots went in, which helped build confidence to keep shooting from deep,” she said.
Her teammates kept feeding her the ball, and she kept shooting. She made 10 of 18 3-point attempts that night.
Bussell was aware of how many 3-pointers she had made because Monroe’s team manager, Emily Eshenroder, was tracking every shot.
“She let me know every timeout,” Bussell said.
It’s been an adjustment this season for Bussell. Last year as a ninth grader, she had her older sister with her every step of the way.
“Being able to play my first year of high school basketball with my sister meant the world,” she said. “It took a lot of pressure off me because the defense focused in on her.”
This year, she’s the leader of the team.
“At first it was kind of difficult not having my sister around, because the defense started focusing on me, but it’s only going to make me a better player over time,” she said.
Monroe head coach John Mason, who took over the team mid-season last winter, said Bussell continues to improve, both as a shooter and as an all-around player.
“It is definitely hard not having big sister around, but she is learning how to deal with it by just playing,” he said. “Our practice environment has a great group of kids that enjoy each other. It’s only a matter of time before this group takes off.”
Monroe is 2-6 and off until January when the Trojans resume play in the rugged Southeastern Conference Red.
Bussell is already a veteran on the court. She started playing basketball in the third grade, going to camps in the Monroe area.
“Whatever camps were doing something (I’d go),” she said.
By the fifth grade, Bussell was playing travel basketball. She joined the Michigan Mystics out of Clio when she was in the seventh grade and continues with them during the offseason.
Mason said Bussell is always in the gym and always shooting.
“Her and a few others stay late after practice and work on their game,” he said. “We work on getting extra shots up that resembles what she will have in games. And before she leaves practice, she hits about 20 makes from the volleyball line.”
Bussell, who also plays volleyball for Monroe, said basketball has always been a big part of her life. She has long dreamed of playing college basketball, something the 5-foot-7 guard seems to be well on the way toward achieving.
“I have many goals in basketball, including becoming a strong mental player and a good teammate,” she said.
For now, she’s not worried about setting more records or how many shots she faces. She also knows defenses will focus on her more and more as her numbers grow.
“I just need to keep working hard,” she added, “and everything will slowly fall in place for my next two seasons.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Monroe’s Sophia Bussell reaches for a loose ball last season against Temperance Bedford. (Middle) Bussell, with the ball, considers her next move. (Top photo by Dana Stiefel; middle photo by John Discher.)