East Lansing— Last Saturday was the third year in a row that Steve Robak has had to “drag” his team out of bed for an early-morning breakfast and a 90-minute bus ride to East Lansing to play basketball.

“I don’t mind doing it at all,” he said.

The players don’t mind at all, either.

When you’re still playing basketball on the third Saturday in March, that means you and one other school are the only ones standing at the end of a season that started back in early December.

And when the action was over about noon at Michigan State University’s Breslin Center, Robak’s squad — Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes — defeated the “other school,” Troy Athens, 53-37, for its third consecutive MHSAA Class D championship — only the third school in Class D, and the fifth overall, in Michigan girls high school basketball history to do that.

The last was Portland St. Patrick in 1996, whom the Lakers beat, 54-44, in the semifinals two days earlier to reach the championship game.         

Both teams seemed to be out of sorts for the game’s first 13 minutes. The Lakers clung to a 21-19 lead when junior Lexie Robak, the coach’s daughter, buried back-to-back triples and then a jumper to conclude a 14-3 Lakers run to give Lakes a 29-19 cushion going into the intermission.

“That was a spark for us,” said senior guard Carlee Cottrell. “It lifted us and deflated them. It put them on their heels.”

Just to make sure the Indians didn’t have notions of an uprising, senior guard Tori Duffey bombed three triples in the third quarter, two of them back-to-back to close out the third quarter, 42-26, a 16-point margin that remained intact during the fourth quarter.

For Lexie Robak, along with Ava Doetsch and Jessica Parry, it was her third straight championship game. “The first (as a freshman member of the varsity) was fun, the second more fun because I was playing with my sister, Lauren,” she said. “But this one was great because Tori had never won (a state title). She was a great addition.”

Duffey had transferred to Our Lady of the Lakes last spring from Walled Lake Central.

All-state Lauren Robak is a redshirt freshman at Oakland University, recovering from a hip injury. Steve Robak said she will return to basketball in the fall.

The coach credited Doetsch for getting the Lakers out of any doldrums. She scored nine of her 13 points, snared a couple of rebounds and had a steal in the first quarter. “She was tremendous,” he said.

Doetsch called Athens (21-6) “one of the better teams we played this year” and said the formula for the Lakers’ success was that “everyone played their role. We put a lot of pressure on defense.”Athenssank just 28 percent from the floor, was outrebounded 28-19, and committed 19 turnovers that the Lakers converted into 20 points.

On the other hand, Lakes made 56 percent of their field-goal attempts, including 50 percent from beyond the arc. “It was one of our best games of the year,” Steve Robak said. Duffey also scored 13, Lexie Robak 12, Cottrell and Anna Robb 7 points each (Robb had a team-high 7 rebounds), and Parry 1 point. Doetsch and Parry also collected their fourth state championship rings — three in basketball and one in soccer.

The Lakers finished 23-4, going 67-14 in their three championship years. Fifth-year coach Steve Robak thought Lakes “had a very good chance” of reaching the state finals after overcoming an “obstacle,” Catholic League archrival Marine City Cardinal Mooney, in the district final.

A couple weeks earlier, a loss to Madison Heights Bishop Foley in the semifinals of the Catholic League playoffs “helped us,” Robak said. The Lakers were gunning for their third straight CHSL girls basketball title. “But that loss made the team understand that you don’t take anything for granted.”

How about a four-peat? No team has done it in Class D; Flint Northern won four in a row in Class A in 1978-1981.

The Lakers are losing just two seniors, Cottrell and Duffey. “We’ll have our core girls back. But for now I want to enjoy this moment,” Robak said.