Lakers earn share of OAA red crown
West Bloomfield earns share of OAA Red crown with win over Clarkston
WEST BLOOMFIELD » When your ‘Senior Night’ lineup is probably good enough to start for almost anybody in the state, and your ‘second unit’ — composed of your normal starters and the rest of the key contributors — certainly is good enough, you’re probably doing all right.
The West Bloomfield Lakers honored their four seniors — Jade Goodloe, Ashli Jenkins, Logan Lewis and the newly-committed Lola Chambers — with starting nods in Wednesday’s Senior Night game, getting 33 combined points from the foursome.
Then they proceeded to add 12 more from the fifth starter — sophomore Sydney Hendrix — and 37 off the bench, in rolling past Clarkston, 82-58, completing the regular-season sweep of their closest pursuer in the Oakland Activities Association Red Division standings.
“It’s a great problem to have, great, great depth. I can’t say enough about just how hard they work. When we come in, we try to really focus on ‘No let ups’ and they did a great job today,” West Bloomfield coach Bert Mosley said.
“Clarkston’s a solid team, and they’ve got shooters. I knew they weren’t gonna give up. Once our bench came in, with energy, and they turned up for the seniors tonight.”
With just two games left on the league docket — at Birmingham Groves on March 12, and at Royal Oak on March 17 — the Lakers (81, 6-0 OAA Red) have clinched at least a share of the Red Division title. Last year, the Lakers and Southfield A&T shared the crown with two league losses each. As of Wednesday night, Clarkston (8-2, 3-2) and Groves (6-5, 3-2) sit in a tie for second place.
This year’s senior class helped the Lakers win the OAA White in 2018-19, their last season in the lower division, before bumping up to the Red.
The Wolves battled with the Lakers for the better part of one quarter Wednesday night, but West Bloomfield pulled away from an 8-8 tie with 13 straight points to end the first quarter up 21-8, and just accelerated from there.
“We got within eight in the sec
ond quarter, and I thought the momentum was with us. We were doing good things — my girls just worked hard. That’s a (heck) of a talented team. My girls, Clarkston girls, we play the game the right way. We’re where we’re supposed to be, doing what we’re supposed to do … and sometimes you get punched in the mouth. Life isn’t about what happens to you, it’s about how you respond, and we’ll see how our girls respond,” said Clarkston coach John Weyer, admitting the Lakers’ depth just wears on you.
“It does. It does. We’re young with our depth, too, so we don’t have that senior-level depth. Our seniors are on the court, and they’re giving everything for us. I think my girls can be very proud of how they played the game.”
While the Lakers do have exceptional depth, given the addition of four talented freshmen — Destiny Washington, Kendall Hendrix and twins Indya and Summer Davis — to an already solid core, working those players into the rotation was never a problem chemistry-wise. None of the upperclassmen begrudged the youngsters their large roles on what’s turned into a state championship contender.
“The thing with that is we do a good job of, I tell my kids to be happy for their teammates. That’s something that we try to do. If you look at how our games have been going, somebody different has been leading us in scoring
every game. The way we run our offense, I don’t really run it for one person. I just kind of let girls feel the game out, and get their points in the flow of the game. You never know who’s going to have a great night for us. I think that’s a good problem to have, because we have so many players that can come in and get it going. We have a lot of people that haven’t necessarily had a great game yet, but we’re learning and we’re growing,” Mosley said.
“We have eight new people to the team, so we’re still trying to find our team chemistry. We did an awesome job tonight in growing. We did so many things better that we’ve been struggling at, and I’m just proud to see the girls grow tonight.”
Getting those newcomers adjusted to varsity basketball on the fly — especially without the normal summer or preseason build-up — is entirely another issue.
“It was so tough. When you think I have four JV kids that came up, and I have four freshmen, and they’re all really talented, but they never played on this level before. It was a lot of things that we were a little slow and late to, considering that we couldn’t have the contact. But one thing I’m so proud of my girls about, they stayed in the gym. They stayed at conditioning,” Mosley said. “The most they could do, they were always there, so figuring out our kinks over these first few games, it’s just all part of the process. We gotta just adjust like any other team. I’m just so proud at the way we grew tonight, because we really got better at a lot of
the things we were struggling at, and I’m so proud of that.”
There were times during the delays, though, given the knowledge of how talented this team could be, should the newcomers mesh with the returning core, that Mosley just crossed his fingers that he’d be able to see it play.
“I promise, that’s been the mindset the whole time. I told the girls — we kept the faith. I told the ladies, I said ‘Hey, we’re going to have a season.’ I said, ‘The team that is the most prepared when that time comes is going to be the team that’s going to go all the way.’ So that’s why I’m so proud of my girls for staying committed, staying connected to the program, doing as much as they could with all the limitations, so when it’s time — you can see they love each other,” he said. “Everybody on the team, they’re a big family. We’re a big family. I think that all played into us working and grinding during that time. I think that really helped us out.”
The Lakers — who scored 21 points in every quarter but the fourth, leading 21-8 after one, 4223 at the half, and 63-36 headed to the fourth — were led in scoring by IUPUI-bound Logan Lewis with 17 points, while Indya Davis chipped in 15 off the bench. Chambers added eight, Goodloe had six, and Jenkins two.
Maddy Skorupski had a game-high 18 points and seven rebounds for Clarkston, while Kaelyn Kaul had 16 points, and Morgan Hunter had 10 points and seven rebounds.