Marshall Believes, Earns Title Game Trip
March 18, 2016
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – Believe it. Marshall will play Saturday for its first MHSAA girls basketball championship.
But only because the Redhawks believed they would – all the way through two free throws with 1.4 seconds to play that made it so.
Junior Nikki Tucker was “a little nervous” when the future of her team’s best season in more than 30 years fell to her ability to make a free throw – and hopefully two – with Marshall trailing by a point and barely a second left on the clock.
What transpired next cemented the final few moments of Friday’s Class B Semifinal against Bay City John Glenn among the series of finishes that are remembered annually this time of year, and sent Marshall into Saturday’s championship game with a 43-42 win.
“My teammates talked to me and my coach talked to me, and I realized that I could do it,” Tucker said. “Jill (Konkle) told me, “Nikki, you do this every day in practice.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I do.’ I knew there would be no doubt I was going to put them in, and we were going to win, because that’s what I needed to do to win and that’s what we were going to do.”
Marshall (25-1), ranked No. 7 heading into the postseason, will take on No. 3 Grand Rapids South Christian at 6 p.m. Saturday in its first Final since finishing Class B runner-up in 1981.
Redhawks coach Sal Konkle was a player on that team, and her words before and during Friday’s game prodded her players to believe they could make it to Saturday, even if, as she said after, “almost every other fan in here, any basketball junkie, would say that Marshall wasn’t going to win.”
That may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s tough to argue with her assumption. Although both teams had only one loss entering the postseason, John Glenn (25-2) had beaten the top-ranked team in Class A, Southfield Lathrup, and went on to beat three top-10 Class B teams on the way to Breslin. The Bobcats’ only loss before Friday came against Ypsilanti Arbor Prep, which will play Saturday for the Class C title.
And John Glenn featured three players who could star on most teams in Michigan, including Miss Basketball finalist Cassidy Boench – who nearly ended the Semifinal as the crunch time hero.
“She was huge. I don’t know how many of (her rebounds) were in that fourth quarter, but quite a few,” said John Glenn coach Cory Snider of the 6-foot-3 Boench and her 16 rebounds, including six during the final period. “I thought that she had to play with a little bit of a different attitude early on in the game when she got in foul trouble. That took away some of her aggressiveness, her ability to go get rebounds. And then when she made it through the third quarter with still only three (fouls), she was able to become a little more aggressive and I thought that that showed in her rebounding.”
Neither team led by more than four points over the final 14:53 of the game, with John Glenn holding that advantage with 3:56 to play. Junior guard Taryn Long made a 3-pointer to pull Marshall within one, and Tucker’s basket with 42 seconds left put the Redhawks ahead by a point.
But Tucker's foul with 14 seconds left sent Boensch, attempting a putback, to the line for two free throws – and she made both to give the Bobcats the one-point advantage at 42-41.
“We practice those all the time in our gym, and I just cleared my head I guess,” Boensch said. “I knew that my team had my back no matter what, so (I) just focused.”
Marshall’s ensuing inbounds pass fell back out of bounds off a John Glenn player. The Redhawks eventually got the ball into Jill Konkle’s hands, and her last-second layup attempt bounced in and out of the basket – but Tucker was there to gather the rebound and draw a foul, this time from Boensch who was going for a block.
The rest is Finals history.
“I told the girls, ‘After Nikki makes these, don’t foul.’ Plain and simple,” Coach Konkle said. “I was confident she was going to make them. And honestly, if we wanted anybody at the line, it’s Nikki.”
John Glenn’s final shot of the game fell short.
Tucker, only a 61-percent free throw shooter heading into the week, made 5 of 6 Friday and finished with 14 points and seven rebounds. Long added 10 points.
Senior guard Jenai LaPorte, who will graduate as John Glenn’s all-time leading scorer, added 16 points to her total. Boensch had 14 points.
“It’s been a crazy run in the tournament this year. I think it’s even better knowing that we’re going to the state finals and a lot people didn’t think we could do it,” Tucker said. “Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, where’s Marshall?’ Well, we’re in the state finals now.”
“You just want your kids … to experience what you experienced in high school,” Konkle added. “Going to the state finals was one of the best experiences I ever had. Mind you, we lost, and these guys are going to see to it that we don’t lose. … (But) the fact that we’re in the state finals is something these guys have dreamed about forever. I’ve dreamed of it for them, and now they’re making it come true.”
The Girls Basketball Finals are presented by Sparrow Health System.
PHOTOS: (Top) Marshall players surround Nikki Tucker after her free throws sent the Redhawks to the Class B Final. (Middle) John Glenn guard Kalle Martinez (11) looks to get past Marshall’s Jill Konkle.
Grass Lake Caps Thrilling Rise with 1st Finals Title
By
Jason Schmitt
Special for MHSAA.com
April 9, 2021
EAST LANSING — Though it may very well look like a fun play on words, Grass Lake girls basketball coach Andrea Cabana has established quite a culture in the small town located just east of Jackson.
And it’s really beginning to pay off.
“It’s a grass-root, fundamental approach to changing the overall culture of the program,” she said. “We’re very in-tune to the younger kids in the Junior Warriors (program), throughout the middle school to JV and varsity. It’s a full program effort to keep everyone involved.”
On Friday, she and her Grass Lake team took another step in keeping everyone involved, capturing the school’s first girls basketball state championship. The Warriors overcame an early seven-point deficit and held off a late charge by Kent City for a 52-50 victory in the Division 3 Final at the Breslin Center.
Trailing by 10 points with just more than five minutes remaining in the game, Kent City went on a 10-2 run to nearly dissolve Grass Lake’s lead. Seniors Kenzie Bowers and Jenna Harrison hit back-to-back 3-pointers to get their team within four points at 46-40. After a Lauren Pongracz layup put it back to a six-point advantage for the Warriors, Harrison hit another 3 and Bowers hit one of two free throws to make it a 46-44 game, in favor of Grass Lake.
The two teams would trade baskets before Grass Lake junior Lexus Bargesser hit a pair of free throws with 35 seconds remaining to give her team a four-point lead. She added two more with 10 seconds left to essentially seal the victory for her team.
“I feel so proud of our team and how we pulled through and didn’t let the pressure get to us,” Bargesser said. “Truly, this is the best thing that any basketball player could imagine happening to them. To be able to go and say you won a state championship is truly such a blessing.”
Kent City entered the game unbeaten at 21-0 and jumped out to early leads of 16-9 and 21-17 thanks in part to its 3-point shooting. The Eagles shot nearly 40 percent from beyond the arc, hitting 11 of their 28 attempts.
They also played well defensively early on, keeping Grass Lake’s two leading scorers, Bargesser and Abrie Cabana, in check.
“The girls executed the game plan absolutely perfectly,” Kent City head coach Scott Carlson said. ”We wanted to take away (Bargesser) and (Cabana) and we did that in the first quarter, the first half really. But they had some players hit some shots that we were going to make them shoot.”
Bargesser finished with 16 points and 10 rebounds and Cabana had 10 points to go along with her five rebounds. Junior Gabrielle Lutchka hit four 3-pointers and scored all 14 of her points in the first half.
Harrison led Kent City with 16 points, while Bowers chipped in 13.
“We had a great season,” Carlson said. “These girls played absolutely fantastic. They overcame a lot and worked their tails off all offseason on their own when we couldn’t get together. I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
For Grass Lake, the championship is a culmination of five years of growth in the program, a program which Coach Cabana took over five years ago. The Warriors faced one of the toughest schedules in the state this season, which helped prepare them for Friday.
“We intentionally had a very tough schedule this year,” said the coach, who now has a 95-18 record in five years with the program. “Our philosophy is we want to see the best. We want to see how good we are. We want to be pushed to our limits. Teams like that will expose every weakness that you have. So we were able to work on the things that needed to be adjusted before big games like this.”
Grass Lake also captured its first Regional title this year, having fallen just short a couple of times under Cabana.
“Our program has definitely been on the rise the past couple of years,” Lutchka said. “We had a team make it to the Regional Final and (it) ended up not winning, so we’ve been trying to get past that point. Every year, we’ve gotten better and better and better.”
And this year, the Warriors reached the basketball summit.
“It’s huge for the girls within the program, something to build on and keep focusing on,” Cabana said. “It’s huge for the district. We’ve never won a basketball state championship at Grass Lake, and I think it’s huge for the community. We’ve had people who graduated a long time ago show up and give us their support. The amount of people who have reached out wishing us luck is astronomical. It will (someday) become a basketball town. We’re working on it.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Grass Lake's Lexus Bargesser (1) tries to get a hand on a shot during Saturday's Division 3 Final at Breslin Center. (Middle) Kent City's Lexie Bowers (3) makes her move around the arc with Amber Boomer defending. (Click for more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)