Snow and High School Basketball; A Winter in Michigan
It’s Wednesday again and time for a look at high school basketball around the state. There were some great games, and plenty of games that will be played later. The snow really did a great job yesterday, blocking 14 games while teammate gravity pulled down 10 billion snowflake rebounds. Every shot that snow tossed up, gravity pulled back down. Even in Mid Michigan where it was light and fluffy, wind came off the bench and was tossing it up. Snow, wind, and gravity combined for a fantastic game and beat plenty of schools around Michigan yesterday. They will really be challenged late in the season when they go up against sun and spring. I don’t know about y’all, but I’m a big fan of winter and snow. Their team has been down for the past couple of seasons, but they’ve come on strong this year. With the second biggest game in the state out of the way, we can get to the rest of the prep basketball games. See the last section for what I think is the most important basketball game in the regular season in Michigan.
Coach Cottrell’s Blowout of the Week
Detroit César Chávez 79 Detroit Weston Academy 18
Kelvin Verble had 15 points for Chavez. If he’s the high scoring player, then they must have played most of the team and everybody contributed. Losing by 61 points is not a good day on the court. This was a battle between the top team in the Charter School League (Chávez) and the bottom team (Weston).
High Scoring Game of the Week
Baldwin 98 Pentwater 80
One hundred and seventy eight points is an awfully high point total. The funny thing is that the game that was beat out for high score was another Baldwin game (Baldwin 85 Hesperia 79). These Panthers on are the prowl and have won nine games and scored 731 points. Their lowest scoring game this season was a 55-51 win over Northern Michigan Christian. Pentwater had a much better game than the first time these two met, to open the season back on December 7th. In that game, Baldwin won 84-35. I bet Baldwin games are fun to watch as they are full of offensive basketball for both squads.
Shooters of Monroe St. Mary
The girl’s basketball team must be a lot of fun to watch. Coach Jon LaBeau wants his team to take 80 shots, with half being from three point range. They try to get a shot off as quickly as possible and have been very successful with this game plan. In league play, they have won 44 straight games. Emma LaBeau, a senior guard has shot seven more shots from two point range than she has from three point range. She’s made 16 more shots from inside the three point range though. One more interesting fact is that she’s shot two more three pointers than she’s shot free throws! She’s averaging 27 points per game!
A New Michigan High School Record
Brad Redford of Frankenmuth High School will get his name into Ron Pesch’s (MHSAA historian) record book. Last night, he hit his 71 consecutive free throw to break the record and later sunk his 72 and 73 to keep the streak going. Redford dominated the Crossover game between Frankenmuth and Hemlock. Crossover are games played between the three different divisions of the Tri Valley Conference and determined by each team’s ranking in their division, i.e. #1 Central plays #1 East and #1 West. Brad had an outstanding game last night though. He had 27 points in the first quarter and gave his coach Tim Crawford his 200th career victory. When it was all said and done, Redford had scored 44 points and is looking more and more like he’s going to be vying for the Mr. Basketball title.
Saginaw High vs. Arthur Hill pt 2
Tomorrow night is the rematch of the #1 and #2 teams in Class A basketball. Saginaw High will travel all of 2 miles and cross the Saginaw River to play the Lumberjacks. This time, it will be a conference game (as opposed to last time, when it was non-conference) to basically decide who takes the Saginaw Valley League crown for basketball. Will Arthur Hill come out and be more physical like they were last time? Will Saginaw High shoot better than the miserable stats they had last time these two teams played? Can SHS use their press to cause AHHS to make mistakes and give the game away? Only time will tell!
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