Muskegon dominates Orchard Lake St. Mary's, advances to Div. 1 final

East Lansing — Muskegon ended St. Mary’s surprising run, making three 3-pointers in the opening six minutes to take a 15-4 lead, and it never being challenged the rest of the way in a 65-42 win on Friday afternoon at Breslin Center.

St. Mary’s (15-11) entered the postseason with a .500 record, before eliminating No. 1 Birmingham Brother Rice in a district final, No. 6 U-D Jesuit in a regional semifinal, No. 3 North Farmington in a regional final, then defending state champion Warren De La Salle in Tuesday’s quarterfinal, to punch its first Final Four appearance since 2006.

St. Mary’s run ended when David Day III made a pair of 3-pointers and Anthony Sydnor III knocked down another shot from deep range for a 15-4 cushion with 2:38 left in the first quarter.

Muskegon, which on Saturday will be attempting to win its first state title since lifting the Class A state championship trophy in 2014, led, 15-6, after one, 28-20, at halftime and 39-27 after three, before closing the game out in style with a 26-15 fourth-quarter.

St. Mary’s 6-4 sophomore Trey McKenney made a 3-pointer to give his team an early lead but failed to continue his impressive play the rest of the way.

It was Sydnor who was handed the challenge of trying to slow McKenney down, after he scored 26 against Brother Rice, 30 against U-D Jesuit, 26 against North Farmington and 28 in the win over De La Salle.

“Trey and that whole group is tough to defend, and we’re just blessed to come out on top,” Muskegon coach Keith Guy said. “We’re committed to defense and we try to make everything tough. If we were going to get beat tonight, it was going to be because Trey or one of their other players had an unbelievable night and we know Trey can do that. We’re just fortunate those shots didn’t go in.

“He (Sydnor) tried to make him (McKenney) work for every inch of the floor and we didn’t want to react to any tough shots that he made. If he was coming out with 30, we wanted him to take 30 shots to get it.”

McKenney was limited to 20 points on 5-of-13 shooting. He made 9 of 13 free throws and had 10 rebounds. Sophomore guard Sharod Barnes scored 13, going 3-of-8 on 3-pointers, including one to pull St. Mary’s within 49-40 with 1:22 remaining.

Guy was proud of how his team started.

“I thought our kids did a great job of handling the moment to start this game because I was worried about us being a little tight and we weren’t, we were loose,” Guy said. “We had to trust their work on this day. The basket is still 10 feet. The basketball court is still 94 feet, so we just couldn’t make the moment be bigger than who we are.”

Wayne State-bound guard Jordan Briggs played well for Muskegon, coming up with 19 points, seven rebounds and five assists with no turnovers, while Day contributed 16 points and Sydnor 11, as Muskegon shot 42.6% while holding a 36-25 rebounding edge, including 11-5 on the offensive end, and limiting St. Mary’s to 26.2% shooting.

“I think we got hurt on the boards pretty good tonight. I think that was the biggest thing, and we missed some shots early that I thought could have propelled us, but like I told these guys, it was a pretty historic run that we just went on and a pretty tough road that we had to get here,” St. Mary’s coach Todd Covert said.

“I think the physicality of the game and rebounding, it just couldn’t get us over the hump. I think we cut it to six or seven once or twice, just couldn’t get that extra shot tonight. Muskegon is a great team, very well coached and very disciplined and plays extremely hard. We were going to have to have another A-plus game tonight and we didn’t, but we won’t take too much from that.”