Facing Rare Deficit, Grand Blanc Finds Way to Finish
By
Jason Schmitt
Special for MHSAA.com
April 8, 2021
EAST LANSING — Sixteen games into the season, on the state’s biggest stage, and Grand Blanc head coach Mike Thomas is still learning things about his basketball team.
The Bobcats had surrendered the lead to Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern after building a 12-point cushion just minutes earlier. They hadn’t come back from a second-half deficit this season. The games they had trailed in, they lost. So it was all new to Thomas.
“I didn’t know that,” said Thomas, speaking to whether his players had it in them to bounce back after facing adversity. “This is the first time we’ve been down, other than in our losses. Truthfully I didn’t know.”
Well now he does. Grand Blanc battled back and found a way to get it done against the Huskies, pulling out a 68-58 victory in a Division 1 Semifinal on Thursday at the Breslin Center. The Bobcats led the entire first half and stretched the lead to 42-30 after senior RJ Taylor found junior Ty Rodgers inside for a dunk with 6:59 to play.
But what seemed to take the wind out of the sails of the Huskies proved to be a wake-up call.
Northern would score the game’s next 15 points. Senior Ethan Erickson got things going with a short jump shot in the paint. Less than a minute later, senior Gavin Fisher hit a 3-pointer, and followed it up with a layup on the break and another 3-pointer to cut the lead to two points. Grand Blanc would turn the ball over on its next two possessions, with Northern senior Trinidad Chambliss scoring on a layup and senior Cole Rynbrandt hitting a 3-pointer to give his team its first lead, 45-42.
“We had a great run in the third quarter to take the lead,” Northern head coach Joe Soules said. “We were in control of that game. And we’re sitting there going, ‘We’re going to be just fine.’ We’ve talked about it all year, ‘Be in the moment.’ The guys battled back just the way they were supposed to.”
But the Huskies couldn’t maintain that momentum. Grand Blanc stopped the bleeding with a pair of Rodgers free throws, and proceeded to close the quarter with a 9-5 run to take a one-point lead into the fourth quarter. The Bobcats then scored the first seven points of the fourth to pull away from the Huskies. Sophomore Timonte Boyd opened the run with a layup — off a pass from Taylor — and sophomore Amont’e Allen-Johnson extended the lead to six with his 3-pointer. Rodgers capped it off by collecting a defensive rebound and sprinting down the court and finishing with a layup to make it a 58-50 game.
“It’s just heart,” Rodgers said of his team’s comeback. “Every day in practice, we work on situations, like us only being up by two with such and such many seconds left. We have a lot of heart, and our guys trust in me and RJ as leaders and we push each other. When someone’s not making their shots, we lift each other up.”
Rodgers finished with 19 points and 12 rebounds, while dishing out six assists. He set the tone early, with a hard drive to the basket for the game’s first score. Grand Blanc jumped out to a commanding 10-0 lead in the first 2:15 of the game.
“We don’t have anyone who quite matches up with (Rodgers), Soules said. “Not many teams in the state do. He’s a wonderful player, a great athlete. He got to the rim and exploded a couple of times. We just couldn’t contain that. Cole (Rynbrandt) and Ethan Morello did a phenomenal job of staying in front of him. He gets to the rim, almost at will, against high school competition with his frame.”
Taylor finished with 16 points and seven assists, and Boyd added 15 points for Grand Blanc (14-2).
“Our guys fought and clawed, they overcame some adversity today,” Thomas said. “But they hung in there and stayed together. We talked about if things don’t go well, ‘You guys better get together and push each other up because you’re going to need it.’ They didn’t fold when they could have. They clawed back into the game and put things together to accomplish their goals.”
The Bobcats will take on Ann Arbor Huron (20-0) in Saturday’s Division 1 Final, set to tip off at 12:30 p.m.
Erickson led Northern with 19 points, while Fisher and Chambliss added 16 and 13, respectively. The Huskies finished the season 17-2.
“This was the greatest four-year stretch in Forest Hills Northern history,” Soules said. “We won three straight conference championships, multiple Districts and it’s only the second time we’ve ever been to the Breslin. It’s been so fun watching these young men mature, especially over the last 18 months. These seniors have been tremendous ambassadors, not only for Forest Hills Northern but for the game of basketball.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Grand Blanc's Ty Rodgers (23) goes in for a dunk during Thursday's Division 1 Semifinal. (Middle) Forest Hills Northern's Trinidad Chambliss gets to the rim. (Click for more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
Tri-Captains Pace Striving Spring Lake
February 8, 2018
By Tom Kendra
Special for Second Half
Things are looking up for the Spring Lake boys basketball team.
The Lakers have raised the bar in recent years, making their mark on the statewide level with two appearances in the MHSAA Class B Quarterfinals over the last three seasons.
This winter, led by a trio of tall, versatile and extremely intelligent captains in Sam Johnson (6-foot-8), Griffin Lorimer (6-4) and Jack VanWingen (6-2), Spring Lake has stepped up its schedule and its game in its quest to get back to the quarters – and perhaps further.
“When it gets to tournament time, it comes down to playing your best basketball of the year and making a run,” said Johnson, who scored a game-high 16 points on Wednesday as Spring Lake doubled up host Sparta, 50-25, for an Ottawa-Kent Conference Blue win.
“A big key in March is experience and leadership, and we definitely have plenty of that.”
Spring Lake (12-3, 6-2 in the O-K Blue), which hosts Allendale on Friday night in another conference game, showed it was going to be a force to be reckoned with early this year when it posted back-to-back tight wins over a pair of bigger schools in Rockford (48-46) and rival Grand Haven (69-66 in double overtime).
Bill Core, in his 17th year as Spring Lake’s head coach, said that in addition to good height on the front line, this may also be the smartest team he’s ever coached. Core said that intelligence helps this team make adjustments on the fly and smart decisions when the game is on the line.
“Those three captains are all 4.0 kids, and they’re great role models,” said Core, who is assisted by Randy White. “They have high basketball IQs, and I trust them to make decisions and figure things out.”
Johnson is the player who draws the most attention from opposing teams at 6-8, with the ability to post up and step out and knock down mid-range jump shots.
Johnson, who plans to play basketball next year at Claremont McKenna College in California, leads the Lakers with 12 points and 7.5 rebounds per game. And don’t try to hack him and send him to the free-throw line. Johnson is shooting a team-best 80 percent on free throws.
The most versatile of the three captains is Lorimer, who is hard to miss with his curly blonde hair and red shoes. He creates matchup problems with his inside-outside game, and currently averages 10 points and seven rebounds per contest.
Johnson and Lorimer are a 1-2 punch up front that most teams can’t match.
“We know one of the strengths of this team is that we’re deep in the post, and that makes it hard for teams to just focus on one guy,” explained Lorimer. “It’s good to have that balance. Plus, we’ve played together so long that we just know where the other guys are going to be.”
Lorimer’s versatility was perhaps best displayed last year at team camp in Rockford, where he was assigned to guard one of the state’s best big men in 6-9 Xavier Tillman (now at Michigan State) one day, then came back the next day and had to check standout guard Matt Beachler (now at Central Michigan).
But the most important of Spring Lake’s three captains might be VanWingen, a slasher who is the team’s best at breaking down defenses. VanWingen is adept at finding Johnson and Lorimer inside as well as kicking the ball back out to the arc to shooters Ben Arteaga, Kyle Wiersma and sophomore Cayden Ball.
“I think we’re a very well-balanced team,” said VanWingen, the top returning scorer off last year’s who is currently averaging 11.2 points, five rebounds and three assists per game. “Our big guys get a lot of attention, but we also have guards who can shoot it. It’s important that we trust each other and know that everyone is going to do their job.”
Spring Lake’s senior trio has been too much for almost everybody to handle, with the main exception being conference rival and possible Regional opponent Grand Rapids Catholic Central, which is ranked No. 6 in Class B.
The two teams met on Jan. 5 at Spring Lake in a much-anticipated showdown, but the Cougars swarmed the hosts in a lopsided 80-39 victory. The Lakers were much more competitive when the two teams played last week in Grand Rapids, but still lost, 59-40.
“We improved by 22 points the second game, and if we improve by another 22 points in the next game, we’ll win by three,” quipped Core, who knows his team will be a huge underdog if it’s fortunate enough to win the District it is hosting next month and possibly get another shot at GRCC in the Class B Regional opener at Grand Rapids West Catholic.
The Lakers can gain confidence by looking back to last year, when they lost to GR Catholic twice during the regular season, then stunned the Cougars in the Regional championship game. That win put Spring Lake in the Quarterfinals for the second time in three years, after it made a surprise run to the school’s first-ever boys basketball Quarterfinals appearance in 2015.
Lorimer believes this year’s team has the potential to make it three Quarterfinal appearances in four years.
“I really do think we have another level we haven’t reached yet,” said Lorimer, who plans to play next year at Trine University in Angola, Ind. “We may have for short stretches, but we haven’t strung it together for a whole game. That’s what we’re working on.”
Tom Kendra worked 23 years at The Muskegon Chronicle, including five as assistant sports editor and the final six as sports editor through 2011. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Muskegon, Oceana, Mason, Lake, Oceola, Mecosta and Newaygo counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Spring Lake senior Griffin Lorimer battles along the baseline in a victory earlier this season against Muskegon Reeths-Puffer. (Middle) Spring Lake senior Jack VanWingen glides in for a bucket in a victory over Muskegon Reeths-Puffer. (Below) Spring Lake senior Sam Johnson goes up for a shot during the Lakers' thrilling double-overtime win over neighboring rival Grand Haven earlier this season. (Photos by Tim Reilly.)