Marian Finishes Familiar Foe to Advance
March 14, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – As all-girls schools located 7.2 miles apart in the Detroit suburbs, Bloomfield Hills Marian and Farmington Hills Mercy have plenty in common.
And then there’s the basketball rivalry they took up a level this winter.
They had a combined tie score of 149-149 over their first three games entering Friday’s Class A Semifinal at the Breslin Center. They split regular-season meetings, and hence, the Detroit Catholic League Central championship. Mercy won their third matchup, in the Catholic League Tournament final, but by just a point. The Marlins were ranked No. 3 at the end of the regular season, and the Mustangs were No. 5.
Those similarities are easy to point out. But it might’ve been even easier to measure how badly Marian wanted to move on to Saturday’s championship game while simultaneously ending its rival’s season.
“After that loss … we just picked each other up. From that moment on, every sprint we ran was to get back at Mercy,” Marian senior forward Laura Bruton said. “We knew we were going to meet them later on, in this game, and it just means everything. It’s been our dream to get here too, but just beating Mercy here is so much more important to us as a team than basically being here, in my opinion.”
Marian (24-2) will be in East Lansing one more day and with one more celebration in mind, thanks to a 67-55 defeat of Mercy in their fourth and final meeting of 2013-14. The Mustangs will face Canton in the noon Saturday Final.
As closely as Marian and Mercy had played each other this season – and with many of these same players over the last few – there wasn’t much left to surprise.
And that meant the Mustangs were plenty prepared for the multiple Mercy press defenses that had slowed them down, especially in their most recent meeting.
That also allowed Marian coach Mary Cicerone to predict to her team a 15-point win Friday if it found a way to break the Marlins’ pressure.
Close enough.
“We kept saying, ‘Here is comes,’ and it came,” Cicerone said. “We panicked a little bit, somebody traveled, somebody threw the ball away. We took a timeout and got organized. Mercy made runs; we made our runs back.”
Marian did lead the final 26 minutes of the game – although that and the final score were not good indicators of the closeness of the game until the Mustangs took control for good with a 13-4 final run beginning midway through the fourth quarter.
And it certainly hurt Mercy’s effort when senior starting guard Allie Grocyca left with an injury after playing only 11 minutes, and senior Candice Leatherwood was slowed by a knee injury as well.
“I said to the kids, we got behind early and it seemed like we were trying to dig ourselves out of the hole, climb back over the mountain,” Mercy coach Gary Morris said. “Every time we’d get close, something else would happen.”
Junior guard Kara Holinski scored a game-high 20 points to go with five rebounds and four assists for Marian. Junior forward Brittany Gray added 14 points and nine rebounds, and freshman guard Samantha Thomas scored 13 points.
Junior guard Taylor Jones scored 15 points to lead Mercy (25-2), and Leatherwood scored 14 including the 1,000th of her four-year varsity career. Senior Tyler Parlor came off the bench with eight points and 11 rebounds
“I told my assistants I thought I’d be retired before we ever got back here,” said Cicerone, who has totaled 559 wins over 31 seasons and last led the Mustangs to an MHSAA title in 1998. “But this junior group came in, and you just can’t boot them out of the gym. … They just work and work and work. We knew we had something.”
“We’ve been definitely looking forward to this game for a long time,” Holinski added. “Not in our wildest dreams did we think we’d be able to play Mercy again after the Catholic League loss. Coming into (this) game, we were so focused, so determined to beat them. We love each other so much, and we wanted to do it for each other.”
Click for a full box score.
PHOTOS: (Top) Marian guard Samantha Thomas works to get by Mercy’s Candice Leatherwood on Friday. (Middle) Marian’s Laura Bruton brings the ball upcourt surrounded by teammates and Mercy’s Taylor Jones.
HIGHLIGHTS: (1) Mercy tightens things up against Marian in the third quarter when Sierra LaGrande cans a 3-pointer and Taylor Jones follows with a steal and a layup. (2) Kara Holinski scores on a putback after Marian beats Mercy's pressure to start a 9-3 run midway through the third quarter.
Performance: Renaissance's Kailee Davis
February 20, 2020
Kailee Davis
Detroit Renaissance junior – Basketball
The Phoenix’s guard scored a team-high 34 points with seven 3-pointers to lead Renaissance past Detroit Cass Tech 81-55 in Friday’s Detroit Public School League Tournament championship game, earning the MHSAA “Performance of the Week.” The PSL overall championship was Renaissance’s first since 2011, and Davis has set the pace as the team has since improved to 17-2 with one more game next week before the postseason begins.
Phoenix coach Shane Lawal called Davis the best junior in the state after the Cass Tech win, and he has plenty to back that up. The 5-foot-4 Davis was averaging a team-leading 16.8 points per game on 50-percent shooting from the floor heading into Wednesday night’s win over Flint Carman-Ainsworth. She had made 35 3-pointers and also was averaging 3.7 assists and 3.4 rebounds per game. Her numbers have come against a schedule loaded with MHSAA title contenders – Renaissance’s opponents have a combined .643 winning percentage – and she often defers to a talented group of teammates, which include four other starters already holding college basketball scholarship offers. The Phoenix’ only loss came to reigning Division 2 champion Detroit Edison, 54-52 on Feb. 1, and Davis scored a game-high 22 points against the Pioneers’ star-studded lineup. She should get a chance to show her skills on the playoff stage over the next month; Renaissance currently is ranked No. 3 in Division 1 in the MHSAA's Michigan Power Ratings.
Davis also played baseball growing up and is considering playing softball at Renaissance as a senior. She’s been on the basketball varsity since freshman year and continues to be all hoops right now, and has made a variety of campus visits and picked up eight Division I scholarship offers with interest from a number of other programs. She is interested in studying criminal justice after high school with aspirations of becoming a detective.
Coach Shane Lawal said: “Basketball is a game of height. So height is always measured into talent, unfortunately. (But) as far as shooting off the dribble, shooting off the catch, finishing with her left or right hand, finishing in traffic, ball-handling – not just bringing the ball up but under pressure, her shiftiness, her passing ability. ... There's a lot of great juniors in the state, but a lot of them have that height that's added to their attributes. I think if she was four inches taller, everybody would be saying the same things I'm saying. She can score on all three levels. That's something that a lot of high school kids can't do – rim, mid-range and 3-point. Defensively, she’s really underrated; she leads us in steals, covers lots of ground. Her IQ offensive and defensively is extremely high. She just sees the game, and she knows how to make reads and just make the right play. ... I have five great starters. I think if she's playing for a lot of teams she's averaging 25 points a game. She averages 17 because she only needs to average 17. She has so much talent around her that she doesn't have to be superwoman.”
Performance Point: “Coming into the game, I didn't really think I'd have to score a lot of points and take over in the game,” Davis said of the PSL final. “But the way the game was coming to me at the beginning, I just had a feeling that I was going to have a good game. Then my coach just told me to keep shooting, so in the third quarter and fourth quarter I was just shooting the rock when I was open, and just taking good shots. ... (Early) I was getting my points off of playing defense. My shots were just falling. I was going to the rim and to the free throw line, getting my teammates the ball. ... We just work hard every practice. We practice to get to the bigger picture, because our goal is to win a state championship. And we know we've got what it takes to beat any team that's in front of us, so we just came in wanting to play hard.”
Energized: “I feel like our energy is different, like energy from the coach and the coaching staff. And we just all want it more this year because we know we could've had it the last two years, and we know we were good. We just didn't have the drive. … A lot of (the energy) came from our coach. When he first came in, he came in telling us that our goal from the beginning of the season was to win a state championship. Every practice we just set our goal, and we just practice hard all the time and play hard all the time.”
Big game: “I feel like me being shorter, or smaller, gives me an advantage because I'm quicker than most people. I just try to show people that even though I'm small, I can still do all of the things that anybody bigger than me can do. (Bigger players) think they either can shoot over me or block all of my shots. So I like the challenge when I play against them.”
Finding her groove: “Right now the best part (of my game), I’m letting the game come to me. Playing hard, so I don't have to force my shots. I get my teammates involved first, and then I'll get my groove going. (And) each year my shooting has gotten better. I shoot a lot at practice, and the advantage is me shooting with more confidence.”
All shark: “We learned that we have to play hard every game. We can't just turn it on when we want to. We have to go out playing hard every game, no matter who we're playing against. (That idea) kicked in in the beginning of this year. On the back of our shooting shirts we have this slogan that says "#ClownsAndSharks" And it's like, which one are you? So we treat all of the teams the same way. We don't underestimate any team.”
– Geoff Kimmerly, Second Half editor
Past honorees
Feb. 13: Jamison Ward, Carson City-Crystal wrestling - Report
Feb. 6: Elena Vargo, Farmington United gymnastics - Report
Jan. 31: Michael Wolsek, Trenton swimming - Report
Jan. 24: Kensington Holland, Utica Ford bowling - Report
Jan. 17: Claycee West, White Pigeon basketball - Report
Jan. 10: Seth Lause, Livonia Stevenson hockey - Report
Dec. 5: Mareyohn Hrabowski, River Rouge football - Report
Nov. 28: Kathryn Ackerman, Grand Haven swimming - Report
Nov. 21: Emily Van Dyke, Southfield Christian volleyball - Report
Nov. 14: Taylor Wegener, Ida volleyball - Report
Nov. 7: Carter Solomon, Plymouth cross country - Report
Oct. 31: Jameson Goorman, Muskegon Western Michigan Christian soccer - Report
Oct. 24: Austin Plotkin, Brimley cross country - Report
Oct. 17: Jack Spamer, Brighton cross country - Report
Oct. 10: Kaylee Maat, Hudsonville volleyball - Report
Oct. 3: Emily Paupore, Negaunee cross country - Report
Sept. 26: Josh Mason, South Lyon soccer - Report
Sept. 19: Ariel Chang, Utica Eisenhower golf - Report
Sept. 12: Jordyn Shipps, DeWitt swimming - Report
PHOTOS: (Top) Detroit Renaissance's Kailee Davis makes a move toward the basket against Detroit Cody this season. (Middle) Davis prepares to pull up for a jumper during last week's PSL final against Cass Tech. (Photos courtesy of State Champs Sports Network.)