WAYNE — Don Palmer has always preferred precision in his offense.
But, going into Thursday’s KLAA championship game, the Hartland girls basketball coach loosened the reins on his team.
“Believe it or not, I told the kids, ‘I don’t want you to be indecisive,'” he said. “‘I don’t think they will allow you to hold the ball as much as against a regular team. I’ll tell you when to slow it down.'”
So the Eagles ran with the Zebras at Wayne Memorial High School, and went home with a 61-48 victory and the KLAA championship trophy.
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“It’s special,” said senior Lexey Tobel, who helped ice the game in the fourth quarter by going 8-for-10 at the free throw line. “It’s special for our school and our community.”
The Eagles finished 19-1, their best regualr season in memory, with more to come next week in a Class A district tournament at South Lyon East.
Wayne, which won the Kensington Conference title, found itself struggling with its leading scorer and point guard, Camree Clegg, finding herself in a position Hartland opponents can commiserate with: Having Michelle Moraitis follow her, incessantly.
But the Eagles put a twist: When Clegg was freed by a screen, another Eagle, either Tobel or Grayson Cockerham, picked her up.
The Zebras, on the other hand, had a hard time picking up Cockerham, who scored 14 of her game-high 20 points in the first half.
“I wanted to be more aggressive, instead of just shooting 3s,” Cockerham said. “I was open a lot, but I knew if I drove, I could either dish or make it myself, and that’s what happened. It worked out.”
“Lexey was on at Howell, Grayson was on tonight,” Moraitis said. “Sometimes you just don’t know. One of them’s hot, one is not. But it definitely helps, getting two shooters.”
Tobel, who had 24 points against Howell on Monday, didn’t score in the first quarter and had five points at halftime. But she got going in the third quarter and then spent the fourth quarter at the free throw line, finishing with 17. Whitney Sollum added 1o.
“Once we got to the free throw line and got to the double-bonus, they kind of started to shut down,” Tobel said. “They’re a good team, and they haven’t been in many situations like that, so they started yelling at each other.”
Meanwhile, the Eagles kept Clegg, who had a team-high 19 points, and the rest of the Zebras working hard for their shots.
“We got out-toughed,” Wayne coach Jarvis Mitchell said. “My hat’s off to Hartland. They are some tough son-of-a-guns. They got after us, they didn’t fold to our pressure, they rebounded well and they carried out their game plan.”
Cockerham had her best night of the season, and Mitchell said his team was prepared for both her and Tobel.
“Exceptional players make exceptional plays,” he said. “You can scout, go over personnel, you can tell your kids their Social Security number, but at the end of the day, you can’t adjust to it.”
The uptempo game, as it turns out, was to the Hartland players’ liking, too.
“It took us a bit to get back into the swing of it, but that’s our type of play,” Tobel said. “We’re used to running up and down the court like that (in AAU ball). It’s definitely good to get back into that. Maybe we can put that into our game now.”
One might reflexively say that idea’s chances are fat and slim, to coin a phrase, but in a season where the Eagles have beaten all comers except Detroit King, the No. 1-ranked team in Class A, you can’t discount the possibility of Palmer pulling an uptempo game out of his bag of tricks.
Meanwhile, the Eagles savored the victory and shot a victory video for Arianna Knasiak, who missed the game due to a trip with the school choir.
“It’s awesome,” Moraitis said. “It’s the first time Hartland’s ever won this championship. That’s real exciting.”
Thursday’s win gave the Eagles their third trophy in as many weeks, counting division, conference and now a KLAA association title.
Next up: The state tournament.
“That’s our motto: Chasing rings,” Tobel said.
