Belleville's Sydney Savoury, Country Day’s Cece Arico impress in freshman matchup
There was a game within a game Thursday night when the Belleville girls basketball team played at Birmingham Detroit Country Day.
Belleville (10-1) is the better team and it showed when it dumped 8-5 Country Day, 64-44, but this wasn’t just a typical beat down.
This game featured two of the most talented freshmen in the state, who were both included in the Free Press’ preseason list of the Top 25 players in the state — Belleville’s Sydney Savoury and Country Day’s Cece Arico.
The 6-foot Savoury led both teams with 24 points — a big number for a freshman, but that is her season average.
“Sydney’s phenomenal,” Belleville coach Jason Wilkins said. “She’s a special talent and she showed it tonight. In a big game, she steps up. She can do it all — rebound, push, shoot the 3, finish — she can do whatever.”
Savoury often lines up behind the 3-point arc and she doesn’t hesitate when the ball comes her way.
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A lot of girls, especially freshmen, physically struggle when they attempt 3-point shots, but not Savory. Her 3-point attempts seem effortless no matter how far behind the arc she lets it fly.
It is a reflection of how much time she has spent in the gym.
“Growing up with my mom playing it and my older brother playing it, I’ve always been around it,” she said. "I feel, for me, it’s something that’s in my blood. It comes naturally.”
It comes naturally because she loved being in the gym, working on her game and she hasn’t been alone.
“It’s a lot of work from my mom,” Savoury said. “When I was younger, me and her would be in the gym all the time working on my form and just try to perfect it.”
They did well and you’re not surprised if you know her mother, who is the former Lisa Rathbun, a 1987 first-team all-stater and Miss Basketball finalist who averaged 24.9 points as a senior at Cadillac.
She was an All-WAC selection at BYU, where she began a career in coaching with stops at six schools, including six years as an assistant at Eastern Michigan.
The younger Savoury had quite a reputation on the AAU circuit and was expected to play well as a freshman.
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“I put in so much hard work leading up to this point,” she said. “I feel when I go out there, I can count on all the work that I put in and it’s paying off, which is super exciting. But at the end of the day, I know how much work I put in for this sport.”
Savory said she has 25 college offers now. In the Midwest, there's Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, and Iowa among the offers, as well as UCLA and North Carolina nationally.
Arico, who scored 14 points against Belleville, seems like a rookie compared to Savoury. Arico also grew up in a gym, but she didn’t spend time playing basketball there.
“It’s definitely a jump because I did gymnastics my whole life until a couple of years ago,” she said. “So I’m definitely transitioning into it, just like trying to find my role.”
Arico’s mother, Kim Barnes Arico, is the women’s basketball coach at Michigan, but she never pushed basketball on her. It took a growth spurt for the 5-11 Arico to give basketball a try.
“I grew like 6 inches over the summer in seventh grade,” she said. “With my mom, I’ve always been around it so I wanted to pursue basketball.”
For as little basketball as she has played, compared to others like Savoury, Arico is progressing quickly. She has a natural feel for the game and could play any perimeter spot.
She has a good jump shot and sees the floor well. On one possession, she was being knocked down when she flipped the ball over her head to a player behind her for a layup.
“She’s a beast,” Country Day coach Amber Deane said. “What I love most about her is she just works her butt off. It’s her motor. Everything she does — I don’t care what it is, a layup, a shot, her offensive rebounding, her defensive rebounding — it’s her effort. I haven’t seen anything like that in a long, long time.”
A former Country Day star, Deane played with Aerial Powers, who is an eight-year WNBA veteran and reminds her of Arico.
“Athletically, that’s the comparison,” said Deane. “Athletically, it’s scary. Those types of players are few and far between. She can play anywhere, 1-5.”
Gymnastics was not a waste of time for Arico. It helped her become the athlete she is today and helped her become ready to contribute and average 15 points as a freshman.
“I am surprised by the season, but gymnastics help with my mobility and stuff and being able to jump,” she said. “I’m very happy that I transitioned to basketball.”
Savoury and Arico know each other well. Savoury’s mother is an assistant athletic director for sports administration at Michigan; she was the one who discovered Arico, then coaching at St. John's, and told then-U-M athletic director Dave Brandon that Arico was the person needed to resurrect the program.
“I’ve known Sydney since I was like, 3,” Cece Arico said. “I’ve grown up with her. She’s an amazing person, an amazing player. It was really good to play against her. She did really good.”
Midterm test
Division 2 unbeaten Whitehall (14-0) passed its biggest test of the season when it went to Cadillac and pulled out a narrow 58-56 victory.
The game see-sawed back and forth until Kal Koehler hit a 3-pointer with 1:20 left. Cadillac came back and had a chance to send it into overtime, but Cam Thompson ended the affair with a block.
“It was wild,” Whitehall coach Christian Subdon said, “but it was exactly the kind of game we expected and hoped for instead of one that don’t mean anything.”
Whitehall, 14-0 and No. 4 in D-2, has enough of those meaningless games on its schedule as it is, so this was a good test at this point in the season.
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Cadillac is a quality D-1 school and this was its first loss of the season, which should do wonders for Whitehall’s confidence.
“It prepares us for the future,” Subdon said. “Playing a team like Cadillac — they’re so big, so physical — usually we kind of out-physical teams. We’re tough, we’re on the ground and they matched every bit of that and then some. It’s like looking in the mirror, except they were the 6-foot-4 versions of us.”
Thompson, at 6-5, is a terrific player. He scores every way imaginable and is a threat from the perimeter as well as in the paint. He will soon become the school’s all-time leading scorer.
“He’s just relentless — absolutely relentless on the boards,” Subdon said. “Another thing to me that makes him special is a lot of kids that are putting up those numbers want their numbers and that’s what matters. He just wants to win.”
He averaged 18.8 points and 13.2 rebounds as a freshman and last season averaged 23.6 points and 14.4 rebounds.
“He makes the right play,” Subdon said. “A lot of times you see a lot of selfish shots, but not him. He’s an ultimate competitor at everything he does. Our kids joke all the time, if we’re playing ‘left right, center’ or if we’re playing darts he’s going to be the best at it, because he refuses to lose.”
Whitehall is tough to handle because it doesn’t leave it up to Thompson to score all of the points. Koehler and DJ Jamison are lights-out shooters, Camar Ready may be the best 5-9 rebounder in the state and Kyle Stratton is in his third year running the point.
Against Cadillac, the Vikings had five players score at least eight points.
“We’re getting better,” Subdon said. “And we’re getting more balanced with scoring. If you can get that every night, you’re going to be tough to beat. And defensively, we try to be a defensive team that can score on you, too.”
Two seasons ago, Whitehall advanced to the regional final before losing, but last season the Vikings were upset in their first tournament game.
That led to a summer in which the Vikings played some of the best teams in the state and they more than held their own.
That was done by design to make sure their tournament run is much longer than last season’s abbreviated version.
“Last year we were focused on other things,” Subdon said. “We were talking about playing Spring Lake in the district finals and we never got there. We’re not taking anything for granted this year — not one game, not one second.
“I think that’s why we’re being successful this year.”
Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1. Order his book, “Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigan’s Best High School Players, Teams & Memories,” right now at McCabe.PictorialBook.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Two of Michigan's top freshman basketball stars ball out in matchup
