U-D fans cheer during the 47-39 win in last season’s Class A regional final on March 16 at Detroit Renaissance.
Before U-D Jesuit launched its recently ended 30-game win streak, the Cubs could hang their hat on their defense. Since Mr. Basketball Cassius Winston graduated and has suited up for Michigan State, the defending Class A state champs might make defense their calling card again.
The Cubs, the Free Press’ top-ranked team in the state, used their defensive pressure to overcome a seven-point deficit early in the fourth quarter and beat Macomb Dakota, 69-61, in the Calihan Challenge at the University of Detroit Mercy on Tuesday.
“There’s more energy on the defensive end,” said senior guard Scott Nelson, who scored 15 points off the bench. “That’s always the key to our success, and it has been since I was a freshman. They always preach defense wins games here, and it really does. Once our defense gets going, we’re really hard to beat because we keep getting steals and easy buckets. And I think that’s where we thrive.”
Twin towers Ike Eke (Marquette commit) and Gregory Eboigbodin (Illinois-Chicago), both 6 feet 9, keep teams from penetrating, while Nelson, Elijah Collins and Zach Winston were effective as the Cubs came out in a full-court press to start the final quarter.
Michigan’s top 20 boys basketball teams
Three weeks into the post-Cassius Winston era, coach Pat Donnelly still is seeking consistency from the Cubs, who rebounded from their last-second loss to defending Class C champ Flint Beecher on Saturday.
“We’re playing in spurts,” Donnelly said. “We had a pretty good spurt at the end of the second quarter to get a lead, and we didn’t play with the effort and the intensity in the third quarter, which allowed them to outscore us by 11, and that can’t happen. I think our effort picked up in the fourth quarter with our defense, we got some turnovers and buckets off those turnovers that got us the lead back.”
It has been a rough December for the third-ranked Cougars (3-2). Jermaine Jackson Jr. was the game’s high scorer (24 points) before suffering a dislocated right shoulder with 2:41 left. Dakota already was without center Thomas Kithier (Michigan State), who banged his knee in Friday’s victory over New Haven.
Jackson had scored six points on three of the Cougars’ four trips up the floor leading up to his injury, and after he left the game, the Cubs went on an 8-0 run — with points from Nelson, Eke, Eboigbodin and Collins — to get some breathing room.
That stretch was indicative of how streaky the game was.
UD-Jesuit had missed its first eight shots of the game before Eboigbodin broke through with a two-foot bank shot four minutes into the game. The Cubs got their first lead, 18-17, two minutes into the second quarter, when they outscored the Cougars 20-11. But Dakota grabbed the lead back on a three-pointer midway through the third by De La Salle transfer Jack Ballantyne, who chipped in with 20 points.
The Cubs had three players in double figures: Eboigbodin (19), Nelson (15) and Eke (14).