Warren De La Salle Follows 'Big Mike' to 1st Final Since 1982
By
Tom Kendra
Special for MHSAA.com
March 25, 2022
EAST LANSING – The guy his teammates know affectionately as “Big Mike,” came up huge for Warren De La Salle Collegiate in Friday’s first Division 1 Semifinal.
Michael Sulaka, a 6-foot-8 junior, scored a game-high 20 points, with eight rebounds and four blocked shots to power the Pilots past Grand Rapids Northview 59-45 and into their first boys basketball championship game in 40 years.
“I wasn’t getting boxed out, so I was able to grab the rebounds, read the dude in front of me and put it back up,” explained Sulaka, who managed to post big numbers despite playing just 21 minutes due to foul trouble.
The Pilots (19-7) were the more aggressive team and dominated the interior, holding a commanding 35-20 rebounding edge and even more impressive 20-1 edge in second-chance points. Tamario Adley, an athletic 6-3 senior, grabbed a game-high nine rebounds.
De La Salle, which won the Division 2 title in football this fall, will vie for its first boys basketball championship at 12:15 p.m. Saturday against Grand Blanc.
“We will enjoy this win for another half hour or 40 minutes and then get ready for one more,” said second-year De La Salle coach Gjon Djokaj, whose team reached the Finals after completing the regular season 13-7 and fourth place in the Detroit Catholic League Central. “I have the utmost confidence in these kids.
“I was telling people this summer that you can go 13-7 and finish fourth in our league and still have a chance to go to the Breslin. Well, guess what? We finished 13-7 and fourth in our league and now we’re in the state championship game.”
Djokaj is hoping his team starts Saturday like it did Friday, spotting Northview a 5-0 lead before ripping off a 16-2 run to take control.
The Pilots set the tone with defense, as their constant 2-2-1 full-court pressure and aggressive zone defense rattled the Wildcats. Northview started cold, making just 2-of-9 shots in the first quarter and finishing at 34 percent for the game, with Sulaka altering many shots from his middle spot of the Pilots’ 2-3 zone defense.
“I’m 6-8 and I put my hands up, and it’s hard for dudes to shoot over me,” Sulaka explained, matter-of-factly.
While Sulaka was dominating the action inside, the Pilots’ point guard duo of junior Nino Smith and senior Caleb Reese controlled the pace of the game. Smith scored 16 points, while Reese had just four, but contributed a game-high six assists.
“The strength of our team is our guard play,” said Djokaj, who returned four starters off last year’s team which lost in the Semifinals. “Our guards were making the right choices early and, in many cases, Big Mike was the beneficiary of that.”
Northview (25-2) fought back from its early 16-7 deficit in the second quarter behind the play of 6-6 senior Jalen Charity, a Grand Valley State commit. Charity scored seven points in the second quarter as the Wildcats trimmed the lead to just six points by halftime, 30-24.
However, Charity picked up his fourth foul early in the third quarter and was forced to the bench. He scored just two points in the second half, finishing with nine and a team-high six rebounds.
The lead was still six points entering the fourth quarter, 43-37, as 6-4 senior Kyler Vanderjagt tried to spark a rally. Vanderjagt, a Belmont (Tenn.) recruit and the runner-up in the state’s Mr. Basketball voting, finished with a team-high 19 points, but the Wildcats were unable to cut into De La Salle’s lead.
“We didn’t get some of those rebounds we really needed,” said third-year Northview coach David Chana. “That’s basketball. Some nights it just doesn’t work out for you. All in all, it’s been a great ride. We’ll be back.”
Tyran Thomas added nine points for the Wildcats, including three dunks.
Northview, the champion of the Ottawa-Kent Conference White, reached the Semifinals for the first time since 1990 and seemed to have its entire community packed into the Breslin.
De La Salle, meanwhile, gets the chance to win its first boys basketball title. The Pilots lost to Okemos in the Class B Final in 1982.
PHOTOS (Top) Warren De La Salle Collegiate’s Nino Smith (0) works to get up the baseline as Northview’s Cam Martin (24) defends. (Middle) The Pilots cheer on their teammates during the first Friday Semifinal. (Click for more from Hockey Weekly Action Photos.)
Future Has Arrived as Port Huron United Continues Impressive Climb
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
May 8, 2024
Brad McDougal knew when he returned to the Port Huron United lacrosse program in 2019 that in order to grow it to what he thought it could be, he’d have to build for the future.
His plan was simple and time-tested: Start a youth program that would get players within the school system playing together more frequently and against better competition, preparing them to one day be varsity players.
It didn’t take long to see that it could work, and perhaps better and faster than he had hoped.
“We’ve known for a while (this was the year),” McDougal said. “Basically, when I started with that youth team, my ambition was if I can get four or five kids that have been coached, then build around them for the varsity program, that would be great. It turned out to be 15 of them.”
Behind 15 seniors, the majority of whom were part of McDougal’s original youth team, Port Huron United is competing at a level it never has before. United is ranked No. 9 in the Division 1 MPR following a 10-3 start, and won the Macomb Area Conference Red title for the first time in program history.
It’s a history that McDougal is plenty familiar with, having been a high school junior when the program began in 2006. McDougals have been part of the program ever since, whether it was him as a coach fresh out of high school and now, his brother Ben as a player, or his father Brian as a coach at various levels throughout all of it.
“Being around it as long as I have, that has sunk in,” he said. “The amount of teams that are reaching out to us now that never would have before – teams reaching out for film, ‘How were you able to defend this?’ Teams reaching out for scheduling that I think would have just ignored the email a couple years back. It’s definitely not lost on me.”
It’s also not lost on the players, who have heard McDougal talk about the program’s beginnings and have also seen first-hand a quick ascent.
As freshmen, this current group of seniors were a major part of a varsity team that played in the MAC Blue – the MAC’s divisions are based on performance, with Red being the highest – dominating it and earning promotion to the MAC White the following season. Another unbeaten league season put United into the MAC Red in 2023, and while there were some growing pains in going 2-3 against higher-level competition, there were signs of better things to come.
“The second my class joined, we just dominated our leagues,” senior goalie Danny Moore said. “We went from Blue to White to Red in three years. Last year in the Red, we went 2-3, but it wasn’t without close games. I think (the rise) definitely stunned us a little bit. Not a week goes by that I don’t think about the giant leap we took. It’s like a world record long jump.”
Moore said the team started this season “like a cannonball out of the cannon with too much gun powder” as this group of seniors knew it was their last opportunity to play with one another.
United was dominant in its MAC Red season, going 5-0 and out-scoring opponents 61-12, not allowing more than three goals in any single game.
On the season, it has outscored opponents 136-50, led by senior goal-scoring threats Silas Klink, Jacob O’Hare, Nate DeLand, Matt Graham and Tim Monaghan. Moore is stopping more than 80 percent of the shots he’s faced, behind the defense of seniors Jack Bennett and Max Williams, and junior Parker Quinn, among others.
That’s despite a beefed-up nonconference schedule, which McDougal put together to better prepare his team for the upcoming postseason.
“We have a way harder schedule this year,” Klink said. “We haven’t ever made it to the Regional Final in all the program’s history, so that’s a big goal. I think scheduling all these teams, Coach McDougal knew what he was doing to get us battle-tested.”
Boys Lacrosse Regionals open May 16, and Lake Orion – which defeated Port Huron 11-4 in the season opener – is the host of United’s bracket.
Winning a Regional is the next goal for Port Huron, and McDougal repeatedly tells his team he wants a Michigan trophy. They’re ready to do all they can to make that happen, but also aren’t shying away from the possibility of blowing away his expectations once again.
“State champs,” said Bennett, who has committed to play lacrosse at Albion College along with Moore. “We want to go all the way. It would just be like – I don’t even know how to describe it. For the program, it would further push lacrosse at my high school and Port Huron. Twenty years ago, we didn’t even have a lacrosse team, so I think it would really push lacrosse in Port Huron.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Port Huron United’s Silas Klink (1) makes a run at the goal against Macomb Dakota. (Middle) Matt Graham (12) maintains possession against the Cougars. (Photos by Margaret Quinn.)