Onekama holds on to top MCE

By DYLAN SAVELA, Manistee News Advocate Sports Writer
Published: Saturday, January 9, 2010

ONEKAMA — The countdown continued Friday night for Onekama.

“Pretty much that’s all I was screaming after the game: ‘One more team, one more team,’” said Portager senior Sherece Revolt after Onekama fended off Mason County Eastern, 46-40.

But with 11 games to go in the regular season, one more anything hardly seems accurate.

Not so, for the Portagers (5-1, 5-2 WMD).

The senior class set a goal this year to finally achieve victory over the three West Michigan D League rivals they hadn’t yet during their high school careers.

That list was cut to two after a season-opening victory over Manistee Catholic Central, and after Friday’s win over the Cardinals, only Big Rapids Crossroads stands unchecked.

“We talked about it a little bit as a motivator,” said Portagers coach Nathan Bradford. “I told them tonight, ‘I know we play them twice this season, but this is our last chance to play them here, so let’s get them.” His team responded, but it wasn’t easy.

In a game that saw 52 fouls, 59 free throws, and five players foul out in all, protecting the ball and the lead was of utmost importance for Onekama.

“I told the girls ‘I know you’re getting bumped and banged, just be strong with the ball and we’ve got to play like we’ve got the lead and take care of it,’” Bradford said.

It took three scoreless minutes before the Portagers first put points on the board, but to their benefit, the Cardinals (4-2, 4-4 WMD) were having just as rough a time scoring.

“This is our first game back from break, so I thought we started out a little slow,” Bradford said. “But once we got going, I thought we played pretty good.”

Revolt scored the first bucket of her team-high 14 to put the Portagers up 2-1 with five minutes left in the first quarter, and was followed by a 9-0 Onekama run before they ended the quarter up 14-3.

The Portagers scored another 14 while holding the Cardinals to just 10 second-quarter points to take a 28-13 lead into halftime. “We had a lot of trouble in the beginning,” said MCE coach Matt Millspaugh “We couldn’t play defense, we couldn’t shoot the ball. I’ve got to believe that’s probably the worst game of the year for us so far.”

With some halftime adjustments however, the Cardinals threatened in the next two quarters.

Onekama’s Sherece Revolt jumps into the arms of teammate Lexi Howard while celebrating a win over MCE on Friday night. (Dylan Savela/News Advocate)

Onekama went the first five minutes of the third quarter without points during which time MCE’s Jennifer Spinner scored six of her team-high 13 to chip away at the Portager lead.

Onekama suffered another blow with under two minutes left in the third as junior Taylor Hagen was the first of two Portagers to foul out. Hagen left the game with eight points, four rebounds and five steals.

“We had a little adversity there,” Bradford said. “I told them we had to have players step up off the bench and they really did. They stepped up to the plate and did a good job.”

Onekama took a 32-23 lead into the final quarter which proved to be a test at the free throw line as the Portagers scored 12 of their 14 fourth-quarter points from the stripe. Onekama shot 20-for-36 overall.

“The last few games we’ve seemed to miss a lot of free throws,” Bradford said. “So we wanted to focus on knocking those down, down the stretch.”

With 17 fourth-quarter points, the Cardinals managed to cut the deficit to three points twice within the final two minutes.

But physical play continued to force Onekama into winning it at the line.

“Onekama gets a lot of credit,” said Millspaugh. “They come out and played hard. They wanted this game evidently a lot more than we did and it showed in the result.”

Also scoring for Onekama in the game were Katie Prielipp and Jaylee Brown with eight apiece, Jennica Mathieu with six, and Lexi Howard added two.

Revolt had a team-high eight rebounds and seven steals while Mathieu grabbed six boards.

The Portagers’ junior varsity team lost at the hands of MCE, 32-27. The Portagers were led by Danielle Ward’s 11 points while Lindsay Nesburg added 10.