Brighton coach Mike Griest says he won’t be surprised if the team his Bulldogs face tonight doesn’t look awfully familiar.
“They’re pretty fast,” he said of South Lyon East, whom the Bulldogs will face in a Division 1 district semifinal at Dexter High School. “They get up and down (the court). they want to run, they can shoot it, and they play hard-nosed defense.”
In other words, he was asked, like his Brighton team?
“Yeah,” he said. ‘It’s kind of a weird matchup like that.”
Weird or not, Brighton (17-5) takes on South Lyon East (17-6) in the first game of a doubleheader at Dexter at 5:30 p.m. The game will be broadcast on The Livingston Post starting at 5:25 p.m. Click here for the link.
Ann Arbor Skyline (14-8) takes on Dexter (6-16) in the second game.
One difference between the Bulldogs and Cougars is in the post, where Brighton has a bit of a size advantage.
“They’re more of a perimeter team than we are,” Griest says, “but they’ve got guys who will battle you down there for sure.”
The Cougars are led by Jake Fannon, who has been shooting 64% from the floor, averages 16 points and 5.5 rebounds per game. He’s one of three Cougars who averages more than 10 points per game, the others being Drew Moyer (15.5) and Jordan Newbill (12.5).
“We’ve got to make sure they don’t get out in transition,” Griest said. “They send some guys down the floor pretty early, abd weve been trying to work on that (in practice), but simulation isn’t the same thing. We need to shoot the ball. We have multiple guys who can shoot (Eddie Millington and Ashton Tomassi among them) and we’ve get to get points in the paint. We want to stop their transition game and get into a half-court game so we can get some stuff inside. I think those will be the keys.”
South lyon East beat South Lyon on Monday 73-50 while Brighton had a bye.
“This week can be tough,” Griest said. “If you play Monday, Wednesday and Friday, that’s a lot on these kids’ bodies. But. at the same time, they have a game under their belts. But I like where we’re at. We got all of the guys to watch (Monday’s game live) and I think it was good for us to see them and be in the environment they’re going to be in. We’ve had some good practices leading up to (tonight), and we’ll see how it turns out.”
