The wait is over for the Brighton boys basketball team.
Last year, the Bulldogs lost to Ann Arbor Skyline 73-58 in a Division 1 district final.
The teams meet again tonight for a district championship at Dexter High School. The game will be broadcast on The Livingston Post at 6:55 p.m. Click here for the link.
“I love being in the finals,” Brighton coach Mike Griest said after his team outlasted South Lyon East 58-51 on Wednesday night. “It’s an opportunity for kids to win a championship. That’s why I’m coaching. It’s not about me. I want these kids to walk out of here with a trophy. I want them to be able to play in a game like that, and now we get to.”
Click here for the archived broadcast!
They got there by withstanding South Lyon’s East’s full court pressure on defense and also benefitted from a poor shooting night by the Cougars, who regularly failed to convert on the turnovers they caused.
“We were trying not to let them get to the paint, because we knew that was what they’re best at, driving and getting fast break points,” said Brighton senior Ashton Tomassi, who had 15 points for the Bulldogs.
The difference was center Ben Anderson, who had a career-high 21 points, all of them in the paint.
He doesn’t mind the dirty work inside.
“Ashton takes a lot of shots,” Anderson said, smiling. “And he makes a lot of shots, but the shots he doesn’t pick up, I’m there to rebound them and get them in.”
It certainly worked against the Cougars. Now, Brighton (18-5 this season) faces a different challenge in Skyline, which is 15-8 after beating Dexter in Wednesday’s second semifinal.
“We know that they are very athletic, really good length, good height, (and) multiple shooters,” Griest said of the Eagles. “They’ve got a really tough inside post player and they’ve got a guy that can finish inside, make it outside. And they played multiple defenses, so they are a handful.”
The key, he said, is rebounding.
“We cannot let them get offensive boards and score,” Griest said. “We have to make it hard for them to score and we have to be able to score against their different defenses that they run without turning the ball over.”
Brighton is shooting for its first district title in 15 years, when this year’s players were in high school and before Skyline opened its doors.
“I hope for these boys we can do it,” Griest said. “It was 2008 since we had a district title, and these guys deserve it.”
