John Raffel
Sports Scene
Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes knew it wouldn’t be easy to knock off Powers North Central from the Upper Peninsula in the Class D state championship game at the Breslin Center.
But the Lakers fell behind early, including 27-19 at halftime, and wound up losing 59-48 to end the season at 21-5.
“We thought we could maybe take advantage of some of their personality,” Lakers coach Paul Roback said. “They’re a team that scores 80 points a game. They want to win by 50. They don’t want to win by 10. We wanted to get them to play a style they weren’t comfortable with. But they were better than us today. We out-rebounded them, but we wanted to control turnovers and have 12 or less. We had 12.”
North Central shot 50 percent in the first half compared to 28 percent for the Lakers, Jason Whitens had 16 points and seven rebounds for the winners. Andrew Kline led the Lakers with 22 points while Devin Senerius added 17 points and nine rebounds.
For the game, the Lakers shot 11.8 percent (2-of-17) in 3-pointers.
“If a couple more of those go down from distance like we’ve been doing all year, the game is different,” Robak said. “But I’m really proud of the boys.”
The Lakers got it down to four points later in the game.
“But to their credit, they rebounded and their coach got them settled down to finish out the game,” said Robak. “I couldn’t be prouder of those seniors. We really improved as a team. That’s to their credit.”
Kline a 6-4 guard, was among the seven seniors.
“We knew (North Central) would have a lot of confidence coming into the game,” Robak said. “They were blowing out teams and won by more than 40 in the semifinals. Coach kept telling us they have all the pressure on them. No one is expecting us to come out and win the game. We knew if we did our thing and play them tough, we had a chance. We had nothing to be nervous about.”
“Our seniors, they went out and competed and got the spots we wanted to get to,” he added. “They’re a darn good team, we’re a darn good team too. That’s why we’re here. I’m proud of these kids for what they did.”
Looking at the start of the season, Roback acknowledged it was a goal to get back to the Breslin.
Devin Senerious was another Lakers senior, and said it was easy to explain his team’s success.
“You have to play good defense and offense will do its job,” he said. “We just wanted to play our game and play defense and shut down their two top players, No. 30 (Jason Whitens) and No. 14 (Dawson Bilski).”
Other state title action
Michigan State commitment and Mr. Basketball Cassius Winston scored 31 points and had nine assists in leading Detroit U-D Jesuit to a 69-49 win over North Farmington on Saturday at the Breslin Center. Winston was 14-of-16 from the floor.
Jeremy Crawley scored 18 points to lead Detroit Henry Ford (20-6) to a 61-47 Class B state championship win on March 26 over Stevensville Lakeshore. Henry Ford led 27-13 at halftime and 34-28 after the third quarter and had a 27-19 scoring advantage in the final quarter.