ROCHESTER HILLS — It’s not often that a team’s first bucket is the turning point of the game, but that’s how Royal Oak Shrine basketball coach Michael Maryanski described the flow of the St. Anne Division championship contest.
Shrine misfired on its first 10 shots and fell behind to Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes, 9-0, before Jaycee Foster followed up his miss by getting the rebound and sinking it with 1:05 left in the first quarter. And after a back-door basket by Jack Tisko and a lay-up off a steal by Michael Bowker before the period ended, the Knights quickly found themselves back in the game.
Seeing the shots start to fall to provide a boost of confidence, and Shrine went on to win the Catholic High School League’s St. Anne Division boys basketball championship, 41-28, at Oakland University on Feb. 14.
“When the first basket went in, our boys felt this is not as hard as it was going to be,” Maryanski said. “When you’re playing for something that those boys wanted so badly, I think you’re going to come out a little over-aggressive. We had great looks, the ball wasn’t falling for us, but we stayed locked in. Credit to those kids — they didn’t give up and their competitiveness continued.”
“The nerves were high, so it definitely had us rattled for a little bit,” Bowker said. “They started out on a 9-0 run, and we had to claw our way back into it. A shout-out to my teammates; they really did this for us.”
Although the Knights shot at a similar rate in the second quarter (making 4 of 17), they found themselves with a two-point lead going into the break, 16-14, and that seemed to take away most of the jitters.
“We had to weather the storm, come out and have some defensive intensity, and from there, we knew the offense follows,” Bowker said. “If we’re not hitting shots, we’ve got to start on the other end, and we’re all OK with that. We’re all feisty players that just want to put up a fight on defense.”
“To be up after not hitting our shots was unbelievable,” Maryanski said. “It was a credit to our defense, because that’s what keeps us in the games. Our target is to frazzle opponents and put on a defensive clinic, and I think that’s what we did.”
Shrine (14-6, 8-2 Intersectional-1) held Our Lady of the Lakes (15-5, 7-1 Intersectional-2) to just five points apiece in the second and fourth quarters. And even though a Latani Ware triple and an Alex Asai free throw allowed the Lakers to creep back to within 30-27 with 6:29 to play, the Knights closed out the game by allowing the Lakers just one more point the rest of the way. The final score was the largest margin of the evening.
“I think it was a matter of waiting for what we needed to do to fall into place,” Maryanski said. “One of our mottos is if we’re not hitting from deep, we’ve got to get to the rim. When we got to the rim, that’s what eventually opened it up and allowed us to get into our defenses.”
“(Holding a lead) took a lot of weight off our shoulders, knowing that we could play to protect ourselves, rather than just clawing back into it play after play after play,” Bowker said. “But it didn’t change our message — we were just going at it 100 percent no matter what.”
While Shrine started the game soft and finished strong, it was really just a metaphor for the program’s resurgence. In Maryanski’s first year, when the current crop of seniors were freshmen, the Knights finished 3-19, 0-10 and missed the Catholic League playoffs altogether.
“That’s really fitting. I hadn’t thought of that. That’s a crazy turnaround; it feels great,” Bowker said. “I remember growing up, I really wasn’t a starter for most of the teams I was on. But my siblings just told me, ‘It’s not a matter of starting the game, it’s about finishing them.’ It means so much to be able to go out on this note as opposed to starting on it.”
“It’s awesome to see what those seniors have built and have continued to build in our program — it’s unbelievable,” Maryanski said. “This is our first Catholic League title (since 2016) and they’ve earned it. They continue to write their story for this basketball program at Shrine.”
