Lumen Christi pulls away to beat Michigan Center

JACKSON — The Lumen Christi girls basketball team opened the coaching tenure of Scott Stine by pulling away in the second half to beat Michigan Center 50-28 on Tuesday.

The Titans led by five early in the third after McKynley Gaddy hit a putback and Mayrese Vieau added a pair of free throws for the Cardinals, but Lumen Christi responded with an 11-1 run, then added a 7-0 run in the fourth quarter.

“We worked all off season and are working right now to get to be able to play against Michigan Center,” Lucy Wrozek said. “They’re a good team who likes to push the ball up the floor, but we stopped that tonight.”

Lumen Christi’s stellar sophomores, Wrozek and Kenna Hunt, combined for 38 points, with Hunt leading the way with 20 and Wrozek adding 18.

In the first half, it was Wrozek coming up with key shots, scoring seven of the Titans’ first eight points of the night with a 3-pointer, a spin move in the lane to get a layup, and a drive down the lane.

“She’s a basketball player,” Stine said. “That’s one of the best compliments I can give her. She can shoot the ball, she can get to the hoop, she plays defense. She’s a tough kid who, one game it might be hitting 3s. The next game it might be getting to the hoop and getting to the foul line. But she’s going to make winning basketball plays.”

Hunt scored six points in the first half, limited by Michigan Center’s use of a box-and-one against her.

“I thought we played great defense,” Cardinals coach Greg Vieau said. “I thought we had a really good game plan to really squeeze in on Kenna. And I thought Mayrese did a really nice job defensively on her that first half. And then they got us into some switches that second half and really caused us some problems. They made some nice adjustments at halftime to get other girls on Kenna, and she was just more effective than that second half.”

But in the second half she scored six points in the third and eight more in the fourth. Hunt had a series of third-quarter layups, one in transition off of a steal, to extend the Titans’ lead to 33-18 after three. She then opened the fourth with another layup before Wrozek drained a 3-pointer off a drive-and-kick from Lily Ganton.

That 3-pointer answered one at the other end moments earlier from Gaddy off of a Mayrese Vieau assist. That bucket, and a Karsyn Smith floater in the lane moments earlier, helped the Cardinals briefly keep pace with Lumen Christi, but the Titan defense clamped down from there, getting defensive stops on the next eight Michigan Center possessions before a transition layup ended that string, that basket coming off a Gaddy steal, with the Michigan Center junior guard then feeding a behind-the-back pass to Mayrese Vieau for the layup.

Mayrese Vieau led the Cardinals with 12 points and Gaddy added eight.

“They’ve played together forever with AAU and now with high school,” Greg Vieau said. “They know each other really well. They missed some shots I think that they would like to get back, but they played really well off each other. They seem to know where the other one is going at all times. So while their shots were off tonight, I expect them to be two of the better guards in the state.”

But the Titans also kept coming up with defensive stops. Michigan Center turned the ball over 20 times in the game and Lumen Christi held the Cardinals to 11 points in the first half.

“I’m really proud of the way we played defense for four quarters,” Stine said. “To hold that team to 11 points at halftime, even with our offensive struggles, it’s impressive.”

Both teams struggled with cold spells shooting the ball at times. Michigan Center, after an Ella Best 3-pointer in the first quarter, did not connect from long range again until Gaddy’s 3-pointer early in the fourth. The Cardinals shot 10-for-41 overall from the field.

“Offensively, we looked like we had three girls with experience and five girls without,” Greg Vieau said.

But Lumen Christi also suffered through shooting woes, going 6-of-32 from the field in the first half before knocking down 12-of-35 in the second half.

Part of that surge came from adjusting to what Michigan Center was doing on defense.

“When they came out in the box-and-one, we had a little issue with it,” Stine said. “At halftime, we drew up some stuff where we could just put our shooter in the corner and put Kenna in a situation where if they were switching the high screen, she could attack the mismatch. And they had to pick their poison at that point.”

Helping limit the Titan shooters was Kara Straub, who swatted away a pair of shots in the paint in the first half.

“Kara has a knack for blocking shots,” Greg Vieau said. “She’s big, she’s long, she’s athletic, so we expect her to block a lot of shots. She’s very active in the post, so defensively she really anchored us. She really makes up for some of those mistakes that we might make on the perimeter.”