Detroit Renaissance holds off short-handed Grosse Pointe South in regional semifinals

DETROIT — You’d think the answer would be obvious if you ask Shane Lawal which is causing him to lose more sleep: A newborn baby in the house or figuring out ways to defend Grosse Pointe South’s Alexa Downey.

The fact that it’s even close to a toss-up for the Detroit Renaissance coach (for the record, he answered baby) gives you an idea of how tough it has been for teams to stop the Blue Devils’ senior scorer. 

Renaissance pulled out all the stops against Downey in Monday’s Division 1 regional semifinal, including face-guarding and double-teaming her much of the game, ‘holding’ her to 19 points as they got past a short-handed but feisty Blue Devils squad, 59-43.

“I can’t stand Alexa,” joked Lawal, who put out a kidding tweet the night before the game, threatening to steal Downey’s shoes to slow her down. “I mean, she’s such a great kid, and she was still aggressive. She didn’t let the face-guarding, or sending two to her, she really didn’t let it frustrate her from the standpoint of playing hard, still being aggressive scoring, still looking for her teammates.”

Then he quickly added: “Definitely the newborn that keeps you up.”

He’ll have at least one more sleep-deprived night trying to find solutions for his next game, as well. 

The Phoenix (10-4) move on to Wednesday’s regional championship game, where they’ll face Farmington Hills Mercy (15-3) for the regional crown. The two teams — ranked as honorable mentions in the final Associated Press poll, and Nos. 10 and 21 in the final STATE CHAMPS! Top 25 —met in last year’s regional semifinal contest, with Renaissance winning, 56-33.

For Renaissance, it will mark just the fourth game back from a COVID-19 quarantine pause that kept them off the floor between March 6 and March 24, at the start of districts. It’s had a bit of an impact on continuity on the floor.

“I’m not going to make that an excuse, because everybody’s kind of dealing with the same things, as far as having a season being shut down for 10 days, and things like that. And honestly, us getting shut down after Grass Lake (on March 6) saved us,” Lawal said. “If we’d have gotten shut down five days later, we’re not playing right now. We just gotta keep building each game. We’ve run out of space right now. We’ve gotta play like we played against Wayne Memorial and Marian.”

Mikyah Finley provided the scoring punch for the balanced Phoenix, scoring 11 of her game-high 23 points in the first half, as Renaissance expanded its 13-11 lead at the end of the first quarter to 33-17 at the half, and then to 48-26 after three quarters. The last two Miss PSL winners, Shannon Wheeler and Kailee Davis, had 10 and nine points, respectively.

With Grosse Pointe South short-handed, the Phoenix wanted to push the pace whenever possible, and get the game sealed up as soon as they could.

“Yeah, most definitely. First of all, he’s got an elite player, and second, he’s a great coach. So whenever you have a good player and you’re a good coach, you can win any game. You don’t want to leave it,” Lawal said. “If you leave a team in the game, and it gets closer and closer, they’ll get more confidence, and you’ll get nervous. You don’t want to let that game carry on until later. You want to kind of finish it off when you can.”

For the Blue Devils (13-4), Monday’s issues were a continuation of their injury problems that have left them short-handed all season. Coach Kevin Richards had just seven players on the bench Monday, because of four vacations and one COVID quarantine, missing all four staters besides Downey for one reason or another.

“This is my 20th year of coaching varsity basketball. Obviously, we’re all in that spot, but I’ve never had the injuries, and kind of the turmoil … it seemed like there was always something. … I’m just happy that we came, and they competed. It was a tall task for them, for sure,” said GPS coach Kevin Richards. “Obviously, it’s disappointing not having our full team. I’m not saying the outcome would’ve been any different — that (Renaissance) is a heck of a team, one that shares the ball really well. They’re pretty special. But it definitely would’ve made Alexa’s night a little easier.”

Downey lost her running mate in the back court, Richards’ daughter Kamryn, early in the season to a knee injury, forcing her to carry much of the scoring load throughout the season.

“Losing Camryn to injury in the third game of the year — you put her and Downey out there, and now you’ve got two kids that can get 30 on any given night, it makes a difference,” Kevin Richards said. “It was difficult. We started two JV kids. I’m proud of them. They took our first four shots, the JV kids. The Bachert sisters (sophomore Olivia and freshman Elsa) — we call them the ‘Bruise Sisters’ — they come in, and put bodies on people. They’re physical kids and they weren’t scared of the moment. We had kids playing all over, different spots.”

Even the lights didn’t cooperate for the Blue Devils. 

“We showed up at the gym for a walk-through, and there’s no power in the gym. We’ve got the natural light,” Richards said with a laugh, gesturing at the big windows at the end of Renaisssance’s gym, “but that’s kind of the way the season has gone. We had a lot of wins, took second in the (MAC) Red. … We won a district title, and in a crazy year, they’ll remember that.”