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Breslin Bound: Girls Regional Preview
March 8, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The MHSAA Girls Basketball Tournament field was reduced from more than 700 to 128 last week with a number of the expected contenders moving on – and few of the unexpected joining the group as well.
See below for four teams from each class that jumped out as we watched Districts finish up and anticipated the start of Regionals tonight. Click for brackets for all 32 and stay with Score Center tonight for scores and updated matchups.
Class A
Dearborn (16-7) – The Pioneers saw a two-season league title streak end, but have improved four wins from a year ago and won their District with a 56-51 victory over Allen Park – which finished 18-4. Dearborn has won 12 of its last 14 games.
East Lansing (17-6) – The Trojans emerged from a District that featured the reigning runners-up in Class A (DeWitt) and B (Haslett), downing Haslett 60-42 in an opener, then rival Grand Ledge 52-36 before beating surprise Lansing Waverly in the Final; 57-41. The Trojans have won 10 straight.
Saginaw Heritage (21-1) – The Hawks’ season looked like it might get away when they fell to Midland Dow 48-40 on Feb. 12 after the team lost standout Jaela Richardson to injury for the rest of the season. But Heritage has rebounded to win six straight and beat Dow 42-32 in the District Final.
Southfield Lathrup (20-3) – The win in the District Final, 56-28 over Southfield, was significant in that the two schools will merge into one after this school year and Southfield was a league champion this winter. But on the way, the Chargers also beat two more league champs in Berkley and Detroit Renaissance.
Class B
Alma (11-10) – The Panthers entered the postseason with a sub-.500 record, but opened last week with an overtime upset of Belding (which beat Alma in the District last season) and then won the title with a 15-point clincher over Shepherd.
Freeland (20-3) – The Tri-Valley Conference Central champion won its ninth straight game in a nail-biter, beating league rival Saginaw Swan Valley 56-53 in double overtime for the District title. The Falcons had beaten the Vikings by only six and five points during the regular season.
Reed City (11-11) – The record may not jump out, but the Coyotes are leaps and bounds better than 2014-15, when they finished 0-21. Reed City tied for fourth in the Central State Activities Association Gold this winter, but beat co-champion Big Rapids in the opener before edging Clare 48-47 in the Final.
Stevensville Lakeshore (19-2) – The Lancers won their first District title since 2013 with a 57-35 win over Benton Harbor, holding Tigers star Kysre Gondrezick to a still-impressive 24 points after she had scored an MHSAA-record 72 in a double-overtime District-opening win a few days earlier.
Class C
Gobles (22-0) – The Tigers nearly saw their perfect run end against a familiar foe, surviving a 65-62 triple-overtime thriller against Hartford in the District Final. Gobles had beaten Hartford, which finished 15-8, 61-18 and 62-28 during the regular season.
Grand Rapids Covenant Christian (16-5) – Last week ended much differently than District week in 2015. Covenant Christian opened with a 45-19 win over Grandville Calvin Christian, a league champion and the team that eliminated the Chargers last year. They then won 54-18 over a Saugatuck team that finished 18-5.
Iron Mountain (14-8) – The Mountaineers repeated as District champs in something of an unexpected scenario. Iron Mountain met up with Mid-Peninsula Athletic Conference foe Norway for the third time, and this time won 51-40 after falling 63-37 and 79-45 in the regular-season meetings.
Traverse City St. Francis (22-1) – The Lake Michigan Conference champion hadn’t crossed paths this season with Northwest Conference champion Maple City Glen Lake, but ended the Lakers’ season at 20-3 with a 62-55 win in the District championship game after beating 15-win Elk Rapids in the Semifinal.
Class D
Ann Arbor Rudolf Steiner (18-3) – The annual Mid-South Conference power took another step this season, winning its league again and then its District with a 42-35 victory over Adrian Lenawee Christian; the Storm fell in its first District game in 2015.
Athens (16-7) – After closing the regular season with three losses in its final four games, Athens is back in familiar territory thanks to a 51-49 overtime District Final win over Mendon – which finished 17-4. Athens also beat Mendon for a District title last season.
Bellevue (17-6) – The Broncos continue to improve under former Eaton Rapids standout Kayla Whitmyer and are four wins better than a season ago. Bellevue beat Battle Creek St. Philip 36-30 in the District Final a week after falling 40-36 to the Tigers amid a three-losses-in-four-game skid.
Fruitport Calvary Christian (19-3) – One more win will give Calvary Christian 20 for the third straight season, but would mean much more than that; also for the third straight season, the Eagles meet Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart in a Regional Semifinal and have lost the last two meetings.
PHOTO: Reed City and Clare players scramble for a loose ball during Reed City’s one-point District Final win last week. (Click to see more at HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
![Tecumseh’s Alli Zajac makes her move toward the lane last season against Adrian.](/sites/default/files/2023-12/231206_Tecumseh_2H.png)
Few in Number, Tecumseh Pursuing Sizable Success with Zajacs Setting Pace
By
Doug Donnelly
Special for MHSAA.com
December 5, 2023
TECUMSEH – First, the good news: Nearly everyone on the Tecumseh girls basketball team has aspirations to play college basketball – and several of them at a very high level.
Now, the twist: There are only eight girls in the entire program.
Tecumseh head coach Kristy Zajac, starting her seventh season, is unfazed by the lack of numbers. Tecumseh will field just a varsity team this season but should contend for a Southeastern Conference White championship and pursue a deep playoff run as well.
“This is a great group of girls,” Zajac said. “At least six or seven of them want to play college basketball. The basketball IQ is so much higher than we have had in the past. We’ve never had a full team of basketball-first kids.”
Zajac said that dynamic has changed practices and the approach on the court.
“We do a lot more high-level skill stuff and high-level thinking,” she said. “We do more read-and-react stuff where they have to play on the fly, which makes us harder to scout. We want to try and give the kids a chance to use that basketball IQ and make opportunities for themselves on the floor so they can score without having to run a set play.”
The list of college prospects starts with her daughter, 6-foot-2 junior Alli Zajac. She holds about 15 Division I offers, and the list seems to grow daily.
She’s been receiving recruiting attention since before she played a game in high school. As a freshman, she was the Lenawee County Player of the Year and has been all-state both of her first two seasons. Last winter, she scored 433 points as Tecumseh went 20-5.
Her sister, Addi Zajac, hasn’t played a varsity game yet but has received a lot of attention as well as a college prospect after several great years of travel ball. She’s 6-foot and a true center.
“She wears a size 14 shoe,” Zajac said. “We are hoping next year she is 6-3 or 6-4. She has such a strong body; I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone that strong at her age. She can push people around.”
The sisters are very different types of players. They also are extremely competitive, as witnessed when they play 1-on-1 at home.
“It usually ends in a fistfight,” Zajac said. “They are both very competitive.”
The team is loaded with more talent than just the Zajac sisters.
Sophomore Makayla Schlorf made 28 3-pointers last season, and sophomore Chloe Bollinger made 26. Junior Ashlyn Moorhead averaged just under double figures in scoring and averaged 3.7 assists a game last year. Junior Lauren Kilbarger also is back from last season and joined by newcomers Faith Wiedyk, a junior, sophomore Sophia Torres and freshman Amaria Brown.
Maddie VanBlack is another travel ball veteran but is out this season due to tearing an ACL.
Tecumseh athletic director Jon Zajac – Kristy’s husband – said it is disappointing Tecumseh won’t field a junior varsity team this year. He said kids playing travel ball in other sports, along with the youth of the current team, are factors.
“It is frustrating,” he said. “Hopefully this is the only year for that.”
Kristy (Maska) Zajac grew up near Tecumseh in Britton, played four years on the varsity and scored more than 1,800 career points under coach Bart Bartels, now an assistant on her staff. She played at Eastern Michigan University, where she was one of the top scorers in school history. Jon Zajac, played at EMU and professionally overseas.
The entire family is crazy about basketball. In addition to Alli and Addi, son Ryder played four years at Tecumseh before heading off to college to play football, and the youngest in the family, Avery, is a budding star in her own right.
“There were a few travel games this year where my team was short on numbers and Avery got to play with Addi and Alli,” Kristy Zajac said. “That was cool to see. She held her own. She won’t get to play with Alli in high school (Avery is in seventh grade), but she’ll get two years with Addi. I got to play with my sister, and I wouldn’t trade that time for anything.”
Jon Zajac stops by practice now and then to coach as well. He and Kristy coach Avery’s travel team.
“He is a great person to have as part of the program,” Kristy Zajac said of her husband. “Anytime I can get him to help with the post players and with the girls is great. He’s a huge help.”
The family often schedules trips around basketball and is seemingly always pulled in multiple directions as the three girls compete at various levels.
“It’s pretty much basketball all day, every day,” Zajac said. “It’s fun to see how the kids enjoy it and love the game.”
Tecumseh, which has won a combined 39 games over the past two seasons, has loaded up its schedule, playing a collection of nonconference teams that made deep tournament runs and won conference championships last season. Tecumseh plays in the Icebreaker event at Ypsilanti Arbor Prep against Detroit Country Day on Saturday and also faces Temperance-Bedford (23-1 last season), reigning Division 3 runner-up Blissfield and Grand Blanc.
Without a senior on the team and no JV squad, Tecumseh will play essentially this group for the next 50 or more games. It’s a two-year window with virtually the same team.
“We’re doing what we can to win this year,” Zajac said. “We want this year to be super successful. We are just taking it one game at a time and going from there. We want to keep building and getting better every day, every game. Hopefully by the end of next year, we’ll be where we need to be.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Jackson, Washtenaw, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Tecumseh’s Alli Zajac makes her move toward the lane last season against Adrian. (Middle) Kristy Zajac coaches her team, which finished 20-5 in 2022-23. (Photos by Deloris Clark-Osborne/Adrian Daily Telegram.)