BEVERLY HILLS (MI) –- Tradition.
It can be a tough opponent sometimes.
That and a big **** frontline.
UD recruit Paul Williams and his Renaissance Phoenix teammates had to face a heavy dose of both Monday night in their MHSAA Regional matchup with Beverly Hills Detroit Country Day at RHS. DCD is the alma mater of Chris Webber, arguably the greatest HS player to hail from the state of Michigan. If he wasn’t the best ever, then surely Shane Battier was and he’s also a DCD graduate.
Not that RHS doesn’t have its own tradition, mind you: the Phoenix have won a couple of State Championships; Renaissance alums include former Mizzou star Ricky Paulding and current college hoopsters Tajuan Porter and Malik Hairston of Oregon and Joe Crawford at UK.
As for DCD, they aren’t just good in boy’s hoops, either. Football, soccer, lacrosse, girl’s hoops, track, debate -– you name it, DCD excels at it -- because DCD can “recruit” where other schools are not allowed to, so they get the absolute cream of the crop in metro Detroit.
Let’s take a look at the current DCD hoops squad: they start off with a frontline of 6’11” Deshonte Riley, 6’8” Donovan Kirk and 6’9” Amir Williams; in the backcourt, DCD features 6’2” Darnell Brown and 6’6” Jordan Dumars. Yeah, that’s right he’s Joe’s kid and he was named after MJ. I find it interesting that DCD has a much bigger starting five than our Dayton Flyers feature. The DCD hoops schedule on their website goes all the way thru the State Championship game at the Breslin Center in East Lansing on March 15th. Clearly, these guys expect to be there.
We had Joe Dumars, Pistons announcer George Blaha, Terry Foster and Rod Beard from the
Detroit News in the house tonight, as well as Derrick and John, two guys that I play ball with at the Y. John actually taught Paul Williams in Middle School and said that he is a really great kid.
RHS broke out to a 10-4 lead, thanks to a pesky press that seemed to bother the DCD ballhandlers. Then Country Day came storming back and led 13-11 after the 1st quarter. Paul scored 6, going 2-7 from the field and 2-2 at the line. The game remained a tight one and DCD was only up by 2 at the half, 26-24. The Yellow Jackets stretched it out to an 8 point margin after 3 and forced to heave three pointers, to press and to foul, the Phoenix could not rise from the ashes and fell 69-55, in a game that was a lot closer than the final score indicates. DCD will be the prohibitive favorite to win it all in Class B. They play Madison Heights next in the Regional Final, a game that is essentially a walk-over.
I had Paul down for 16 points on 3-11 shooting from the field and 9-10 from the charity stripe. Paul's jumper didn't have it's usual high arc and every shot that he missed seemed flat and drew back iron. PW and Jordan Dumars ended up covering each other a lot. Jordan is a sorta chunky kid with a big behind like his dad and he’s 2” taller than Joe. He’s gonna have to drop some weight if he wants to play at the next level.
I spoke with Paul briefly after the game and he was obviously disappointed. “It was a tough game and it’s a tough loss” was his synopsis. “But” he added, “I’ve already got my championship” which RHS won in 2006. Paul said he enjoyed the
Xavier game, which was his first chance to visit the arena for a game. I let him know that Juwan Staten had verballed to UD shortly after his visit, a fact of which he was not aware.
I told Paul the same thing that I mentioned to Devin Searcy at this time a year ago after his Romulus HS squad was eliminated by Manny Harris and Redford:
“Next year starts right now.”
That’s it “From the Swamp.”
You can email me at:
swampy@udpride.com