West Bloomfield Makes Good on Preseason Goal with 1st Finals Win
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
March 19, 2022
EAST LANSING – Apparently Sydney Hendrix holds a grudge.
The West Bloomfield junior has held onto the hurt from her team’s Regional Semifinal loss to Hartland in 2020, and on Saturday, she let it all out on the court.
Hendrix had 12 points and 13 rebounds to lead the Lakers to a 51-42 victory over the Eagles in the Division 1 Girls Basketball Final at the Breslin Center.
“We lost to Hartland my freshman year, and I think I was crying for like three days straight,” Hendrix said. “I wanted it so bad, but we couldn’t pull out the win. I’ve been wanting my get-back for a minute now. I’m just so glad we got it.”
The title win was the first in program history for the Lakers, who last played in a Final in 1989. This year’s team set the goal of winning it all at the first practice, and after losing its opening game against Dexter, won 25 straight to accomplish that.
“I remember November 12, everybody coming together and saying they wanted the state championship,” West Bloomfield coach Darrin McAllister said. “So I knew at that time, our coaching staff, we had to do everything in our power to get us to this point. We bought into the ‘I believe’ mindset. We worked our tails off, and we got here to the Breslin and we did what we had to do.”
West Bloomfield never trailed in the game, and held Hartland at arm’s length throughout most of it.
Indya Davis led the Lakers (25-1) with 17 points and 11 rebounds, while Summer Davis and Myonna Hooper each scored nine points for the Lakers.
“This game was very personal,” said Hooper, who was also on that 2020 team. “We took it upon ourselves to make sure everybody was in the position they needed to be, everybody was playing their role, everybody was executing, everybody was picking each other’s heads up when somebody was down. From Day 1, we’ve been talking about this, and we never let up.”
Amanda Roach scored 21 points for Hartland to lead all scorers. Emerson Sargeant had six points and nine rebounds for the Eagles (25-2).
Roach had half of Hartland’s field-goal makes in the game, as the Eagles struggled to make shots, finishing 16 of 64 from the field.
“I think West Bloomfield had a lot to do with that, but on the other hand, we did have some good looks,” Hartland coach Don Palmer said. “Shots that we normally make, they didn’t go today. Sometimes, that just kind of feeds.”
West Bloomfield led by as many as 14 points in the second half. Roach tried to pull the Eagles back into the game, and nearly did in the fourth quarter. She hit a long 3-pointer to bring her team to within seven with four minutes to play and put some belief in the Hartland fans.
The Eagles wouldn’t get any closer, though, until she hit another long 3 with 25 seconds to play that brought her team within six of the lead. But West Bloomfield was able to close the game out at the free throw line.
“I personally thought we still had a chance with 30 seconds left,” Roach said. “We fight back every single game. I’m just proud of everybody.”
Each Hartland push was met with a response from the Lakers, and often it was the result of an offensive rebound, or two. Hendrix had seven on her own.
“She’s a beast,” Palmer said. “She is strong, she can finish, she’s got a little bit of a mid-range jumpshot. A lot of times when you have teams with ‘superstars’ those other kids get lost in the coverage, but I certainly picked (Hendrix) up on tape.”
Hartland also came into Saturday in search of its first Finals title after advancing beyond the Quarterfinal for the first time.
“Obviously, it feels great to be up here and play with all these girls that I started with,” Hartland senior Leah Lappin said. “Obviously, disappointing because we didn’t play our best. But it was good to play with these girls.”
PHOTOS (Top) West Bloomfield’s Indya Davis (24) turns toward the lane Saturday as Hartland’s Lauren Sollon (25) walls off the baseline. (Middle) The Lakers’ Myonna Hooper (4) prepares to make her move toward the hoop. (Below) Sydney Hendrix (5) pulls up for a shot over Sollon’s reach. (Click for more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
West Bloomfield Shows Multiple Ways It Wins In Pulling 1 Closer to Potential Repeat
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
March 17, 2023
EAST LANSING – The versatility of West Bloomfield was on full display during Friday afternoon’s first Division 1 Semifinal at Breslin Center.
In the first half, the Lakers pounded the ball inside to 5-foot-11 senior forward Sydney Hendrix, who scored 12 of her 20 points during the first quarter – and, on the rare occasion she did miss, her teammates continuously grabbed offensive rebounds until they scored.
In the second half, it was time for some full-court pressure featuring multi-talented junior twins Indya Davis (a team-high 23 points and 12 rebounds) and Summer Davis (20 points), who swarmed the Salem guards, producing one easy basket after another.
The end result was a great afternoon for green-clad West Bloomfield on St. Patrick’s Day, as a comfortable 78-53 victory put the Lakers in position to capture a second-consecutive Division 1 title Saturday.
“We’re not satisfied with that,” said West Bloomfield coach Darrin McAllister, who is now 51-3 in his two seasons as coach. “We’ve done better. We hold ourselves to a higher standard.”
West Bloomfield, 26-2 and champion of the Oakland Activities Association Red, advanced to Saturday’s 12:15 p.m. Division 1 title game against Rockford.
Hendrix, a four-year varsity starter who has committed to Division I Florida A&M, asked for the ball in the post repeatedly to start the game, leading her team to a 16-8 lead after one quarter.
The Lakers were relentless on the boards, completing the first half with a better than 2-to-1 rebounding advantage and finishing the game with a 47-27 edge on the glass.
“Going into the game, we had that mentality to go to the rack,” said Hendrix, the daughter of Niki Sevillian-Hendrix, who starred at Flint Northwestern and then won a national title at Stanford in 1992. “My plan was to go to the hoop until they stopped me, and they weren’t stopping me.”
After building a comfortable 33-19 halftime lead behind their dominant inside game, McAllister and the Lakers shifted gears in the third quarter – showcasing the team’s full-court skills.
Led by the Davis twins – who McAllister has called “Swiss Army knives” because of their ability to do so many different things – the Lakers gave Salem fits with a suffocating press, forcing six turnovers in the first three minutes of the third quarter as a 14-4 run made the lead 24 points.
“That (press) got us going on offense and got everyone pumped up,” said Summer Davis, who finished with a team-high four assists.
West Bloomfield, which also has a Class A runner-up finish from 1989, had a comfortable 57-34 lead entering the fourth quarter.
Salem, which finished 2-15 just two seasons ago, received an impressive individual performance from Madison Morson.
Morson, an athletic 5-9 junior, scored all eight of her team’s points in the first quarter and never slowed down, finishing with a game-high 31 points and six rebounds.
“I was looking forward to it,” said Morson, who tweaked her ankle in the Rocks’ Quarterfinal win over Riverview on Tuesday but showed no ill effects. “We knew they were going to crash the boards hard and be reaching their hands out for everything.”
Senior guard Shahd Bakkar scored 15 points, but no other Salem player scored more than three.
“This is a dream; this is a movie,” said second-year Salem coach Rod Wells. “Think about it: these seniors won a combined four games in their freshman and sophomore years. So they went from winning four games to the Final Four.”
Wells is also excited to have Morson back for one more year.
“Madison is a hidden gem,” Wells explained. “She is one of the best players in the state, and she does it so smooth. Her teammates love playing with her because she’s not a ball-hog.”
The Rocks shot just 34 percent (compared to 47 percent for West Bloomfield) from the floor and hurt themselves with 20 turnovers, many coming against the full-court press in the third quarter.
West Bloomfield, whose closest tournament game was an 18-point win over Lake Orion in the Regional Final, has now won its six tournament games by an average of 29.5 points.
McAllister hopes his team has enough left in the tank for one more big win and a second-straight championship.
“We didn’t want to come out right away today with our full-court press, having to play back-to-back games,” explained McAllister. “We know we always get the other team’s best effort as defending state champions, and we have to be ready.”
PHOTOS (Top) West Bloomfield's Kendall Hendrix gets up a shot during Friday's first Division 1 Semifinal at Breslin Center, with Salem's Abby Resovsky defending. (Middle) The Lakers' Indya Davis (24) is among those defending as Madison Morson pulls up for a jumper.