Elijah Williams helps Brother Rice cruise to regional title win
The Brother Rice Warriors felt no pain during their six minute scoreless stretch to open up Tuesday’s regional semifinal game against Utica.
Half of it was that Utica themselves had just five points in that span. The other half is that the Warriors never forgot who they are.
Nor should they have — because after they finally got their first bucket off a Warren Marshall IV 3-pointer, they closed the quarter on a 12-2 run in under two minutes, setting the stage for their eventual 72-47 victory over the Chieftains.
“Not concerned,” said Rice sophomore Elijah Williams of the slow start. “We know ourselves and we knew we were going to get back in it. Just to settle down.”
Even after that explosion to close the period, Utica continued to play
Brother Rice tight. They trailed just 22-19 in the middle of the second quarter, but once again, the Warriors destroyed all momentum and took it all and then some onto their own side, ending the half on a 14-3 run.
That’s a 26-5 advantage in the first two quarters’ closing minutes in what was a 14-point game going into halftime.
“We just feel like we can wear people down with our defense,” said Brother Rice head coach Rick Palmer. “We might hit a couple shots, we might not get going, but if we play defense for 32 minutes, eventually it’ll crack and lead to some runouts, some dunks like you saw tonight.”
The third quarter remained closely contested with the Chieftains getting as close as 10 points, but Rice finally buried Utica with a 21-10 fourth quarter.
It wouldn’t have happened without Williams, who scored a gamehigh 21 points, including finishing a cross-court alley oop to put the Warriors up by 21 with five minutes left.
“We’re pretty blessed to have him (Williams), that’s for sure,” Palmer said. “As good of a player as he is, he’s an even better kid. He’s a super easy star to coach. When your best players are easy to coach, your other players don’t have a choice.”
Part of that coachability, Williams admits, comes from being a coaches’ son — his father, Monty, is the head coach of the Detroit Pistons. And with the Williams family not moving to Detroit until well into the summer, Elijah missed lots of the team’s summer exercises and camps.
It led to the five-star recruit having something of a slow start to the season. But since he’s come along, he’s been arguably the best player on one of the best teams in Michigan.