By John Raffel
MaxPreps.com
Detroit Martin Luther King won the Class A girls basketball state championship last season with a 43-36 win over Fraser in the title game. Coach William Winfield wouldn't mind making it back-to-back titles this winter.
But it won't be easy, Winfield said, despite his program's success in recent years.
Winfield's team won the girls state titles in 2003 and 2006. They were runner-up in 2004 and 2005, losing the 2004 game to Lansing Waverley, 33-32.
But just getting to the state title game for the fifth-straight season won't be easy, especially with two of his best players academically ineligible until midway through the season.
Detroit King is 3-1 after three weeks of girls basketball games with its only loss being to Hope High School out of Chicago.
Winfield's team was 26-1 last year.
"When we came back to win the city championship game, then I thought we would have a shot at the state title," Winfield said. "We had lost earlier in the season to a good Livonia Ladywood team. I came to realize we had to do something about our defense. We didn't have an identity at the time. We played defense but didn't have any intensity.
"We decided to start playing a sagging man-to-man defense. It did the job for us. We faced Ladywood again and beat them by 15 points," Winfield said.
Winfield was confident his team could win another state title this winter. But then Diamond Smith and Victoria Jones, All-Staters from last year, were declared academically ineligible.
"If we're lucky we can get them back for the second semester," Winfield said.
Ironically, the switch of seasons from fall to winter for girls basketball, Winfield said, affects his players' eligibility status.
"If we were starting the season in August instead of November, they would have been academically eligible," Winfield said.
He still has exellent talent on the team with players like junior point guard Courtney Townsend.
"She's our only starter coming back from last season," Winfield said. "Jeanna Dockery, a senior, was our sixth man last year. Because of our lineup situation, we're basically going with a four-guard lineup."
Nadina Coffey, a senior, is another key player for Detroit King along with senior guard Stephanie Hoskins.
"It's a guard-oriented team," Winfield said. "If we get those other two girls back next month, we can make a decent showing in the state playoffs."
Boys Basketball
Free throw shooting can make or break a team.
Greenville's boys basketball team was topsy-turvey in getting out to a 3-0 start. But hopes for a 4-0 record ended Thursday night with a 56-55 loss to Lowell in O-K White Conference action.
The Jackets defeated Belding last week 52-49 despite an 8-of-21 shooting night from the free-throw line. Four days later, they shot 26-of-28 from the charity stripe and beat Grand Rapids Creston, 62-54.
But Thursday in the one-point loss to Lowell, the Jackets were 10-of-19 from the stripe and missed the front end of a one-and-one with a second to play, trailing by a point.
Greenville squandered a 31-22 halftime lead.
"We knocked down our shots in the second half," Lowell coach Jeff McDonald said. "We came out with a 2-3 zone that we don't normally play and our energy was up."
Wrestling
DeWitt, located five miles north of Lansing, routed Okemos 60-9 in the finals of the Carson City-Crystal Invitational this week and improved its record to 6-0, with hopes of eventually being a state title contender in
wrestling.
"We're looking good," DeWitt Coach Brian Byers said. "We have a lot of seniors. We'll probably go to the regionals this year and then run into Eaton Rapids, ranked No. 4 in the state."
Hockey
Orchard Lake St. Mary won the Division 1 hockey state title last season and Brian Klanow thinks his team could do it again. But it may take some time, he said, for his team to look like a state title contender.
Senior forward Bill Balent leads the St. Mary attack.
"He works so hard to make himself better," Klanow said. "He has a nose for the puck. He's very fast for his size, at 5-8, 170. He makes everyone around him better. Even this year, he has shown a lot of improvement."
St. Mary is off to a 3-2 start.
"We're a young team this year," Klanow said. "We have a long ways to go to reach our goals. But we have seen progress. Our goal is to still get back in the state championship game."
