Haslett Again Meets Great Expectations
March 20, 2015
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – Expectations for Haslett’s girls basketball team were set during a run to the Class A Regional Finals a year ago keyed by a lineup that would remain mostly intact for this winter.
Those expectations were fulfilled again Friday at the Breslin Center as the Vikings took a step deeper into the MHSAA Tournament than any team in their program’s history.
Haslett advanced to its first MHSAA Final with a 63-52 win over Benton Harbor, never trailing during the second half while building a lead as large as 14 points.
The Vikings had made the Semifinals only one other season, in 1995. And this return seemed unlikely when one of the core four of seniors was injured midway through the winter.
“To us, it just means the world, to play for a state championship,” said forward Makenna Ott, who missed nine games with a leg injury. “It’s us. It could’ve been another team here. We’ve worked so hard for this."
Haslett (22-5) will face Detroit Country Day in the Class B Final at 6 p.m. Saturday.
Ott, the team’s leading scorer at 13.2 points per game, missed four of Haslett’s five losses this winter, and wasn’t at full strength when the Vikings fell to Country Day 57-43 on Feb. 26.
But if this tournament run has shown how strong the team is at full strength, Friday’s win showed how potent the rest of Haslett’s lineup is as well.
Ott led with 18 points. But senior forward Karson Tripp added 14 and seven rebounds, senior guard Adrianna Stolicker had 13 points and junior guard Megan Mowid had 11 points, seven rebounds and four steals. Senior point guard Kenzie DeCook added seven points and a team-high four assists, and as a group they played 154 of a possible 160 minutes.
And yet, they sensed they might be tiring Benton Harbor out with a pace the seemed especially frenetic for a team subbing so rarely.
“Their team had so much firepower, I would’ve liked to see us get a bigger lead earlier so we could relax more and not be quite so worried about every possession,” Haslett coach Bob Currier said. “(But) I kept looking behind me at my assistant coach, and I said I think they’re more tired than we are. We kept pushing the ball, and that separated us.”
The teams played point for point until Stolicker’s 3-pointer with 2:36 left in the first half ignited a 9-0 run to finish the second quarter. Tripp hit a 3-pointer midway through the third quarter to start a 12-2 run that put Haslett up 14 points with eight minutes to play.
Miss Basketball finalist and Michigan State recruit Kalabrya Gondrezick scored 20 points and junior sister Kysre had 17. But Benton Harbor (20-6) shot only 35 percent from the floor – compared to 47 percent for Haslett – and never cut the lead below nine points.
“I don’t know if the atmosphere was euphoric for some. Kysre and Kalabrya are used to this atmosphere as such, but it was the first trip to the final four for this group of young ladies,” said Benton Harbor coach Lisa Harvey-Gondrezick, who also is the mother of Kysre and Kalabrya. “We were a little stifled offensively, and I don’t think we executed our gameplan well enough.”
Haslett entered the postseason ranked No. 8 in Class B and has eliminated three top-five teams over the last three weeks.
The thought that the Vikings had the potential to finish number one may have seemed daunting at times this winter – but giving themselves an opportunity always was part of the plan.
“We’ve wanted this from the beginning,” Stolicker said. “We knew we were going to do whatever it took to get to this point. It’s always been a goal."
Click for the full box score.
PHOTOS: (Top) Haslett huddles after advancing to its first MHSAA Final. (Middle) Benton Harbor’s Kysre Gondrezick works to get around Haslett’s Megan Mowid.
Renaissance, Davis Show Earn Encore Performance
By
Jason Schmitt
Special for MHSAA.com
April 7, 2021
EAST LANSING – For those who may have had something else going on Wednesday afternoon, don’t worry, there will be one more chance to catch the “Kailee Davis Show.”
The Detroit Renaissance senior put her talents on display at the Breslin Center in East Lansing, scoring seven points in a span of 21 seconds late in the game to help her team defeat Wayne Memorial,75-72, in a Division 1 Semifinal.
“It was just about not giving up,” said Davis, who finished with a game-high 33 points in her team’s victory. “I believe in my teammates, and they believe in me. Once they told me to go, I just wanted to win this for them.”
With her team trailing 69-64 with just over two minutes to play, Davis calmly hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead to two points. She then picked up a steal and converted a layup to tie the game at 69-69. Davis topped it off with another steal of the ensuing in-bounds pass and was fouled, converting a pair of free throws to give her team its first lead since early in the third period.
“(Kailee) challenged me on something, when I said ‘She hasn’t been getting to that steal like she did last year,’” Renaissance head coach Shane Lawal said. “I felt like she stepped up today. She told me to shut up. She went out and got two or three of those at the end of the game. That’s all I ever want to do, is challenge my kids, to be the best that they can be.”
Davis finished with 19 points in the fourth quarter alone. She scored 10 of her team’s 12 points during an early stretch of the fourth which cut Wayne Memorial’s 11-point lead down to three. The Zebras (17-3) would stretch the lead back to seven points before Davis and her teammates made the late push to earn a spot in Friday’s Division 1 championship game.
“(Davis) is an absolutely amazing player,” Wayne Memorial head coach Jarvis Mitchell said. “She absolutely willed them to win. She made some tough shots. We tried to make her work as much as possible, but at the end of the day, when a kid is resilient and they want to win … it wasn’t that my kids didn’t want to win, I just think she wanted to win a little bit more.”
Davis’s performance overshadowed what was a tremendous game by Wayne Memorial seniors Alanna Micheaux and LaChelle Austin. Micheaux, who will be playing basketball for the University of Minnesota next year, finished with 29 points and 17 rebounds. Austin had 25 points, nine rebounds and seven assists for the Zebras. They combined for 29 points in the second and third quarters, when their team turned a 13-point deficit into a nine-point lead.
“Alanna Micheaux, I’m a huge fan of hers,” Lawal said after the game. “Her ceiling is only (going) up. And Austin is going to have a great career in the MAC (at Eastern Michigan). Shout out to those two great seniors.”
Renaissance got off to a hot start against the Zebras. The Phoenix opened the game by scoring nine of the first 12 points, fueled by a corner 3-pointer and steal and drive to the basket by senior Mikyah Finley. The Phoenix finished the quarter on a 10-0 run, thanks to three 3-pointers, two by Finley and one by Davis, in the final two minutes to take a 21-8 lead.
Finley finished the game with 18 points. Senior Shannon Wheeler added 10 points for Renaissance (13-4).
“They played an absolutely amazing game,” Mitchell said of the Phoenix. “They have some absolutely tough kids. They deserved to win. It’s hard to stop a team with resilience. Renaissance never gave in to emotion. They just continued to go fight. And when we thought we had them, they just kept plugging and plugging. And that was the basketball game.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Detroit Renaissance's Kailee Davis launches a shot while leading her team to a Division 1 Semifinal win Wednesday. (Middle) Wayne Memorial's LaChelle Austin gets to the basket. (Click for more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)