How a new defense sent Brandywine girls basketball to the MHSAA D3 state championship game

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Josh Hood said he had his best night of sleep in weeks Wednesday night.

Impressive considering he taught his team a whole new defense that day.

Hood was confident in his Brandywine girls basketball group, and it showed in Thursday’s MHSAA Division 3 state semifinal. The Bobcats smothered Lake City, taking away the Trojans’ two best players on its way to a 52-39 victory.

The win advances Brandywine (26-1) to Saturday’s 4 p.m. state championship game against Ypsilanti Arbor Prep (24-4) at the Breslin Center, located on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing.

“They executed it to perfection,” said Hood of his team’s defensive strategy. “That’s what you get when you have a team GPA of 3.8 — a bunch of unbelievable student-athletes. They executed unbelievably, and it took an army. We played eight girls out there; the bench was into it. Just really proud of the Brandywine Bobcat nation.”

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After playing man-to-man, full-court defense all season, Hood implemented a triangle-and-two defense in practice Wednesday to combat Lake City’s size. The Trojans have two players over 6 feet tall in 6-foot-4 Alison Bisballe and 6-foot-1 MacKenzie Bisballe. Meanwhile, the Bobcats have nobody taller than 5-foot-9.

Brandywine constantly double-teamed the cousins, daring the other three Lake City players to make shots to beat them. The Trojans couldn’t do it, mustering just 16 points through the first two-and-a-half quarters. The Bisballe’s would finish with a combined 29 points, but it came on 26 shot attempts.

“When (Hood) said we were going to run something completely different, it was surprising,” senior Kadence Brumitt said. “When he told me the two shortest girls on the team will be guarding their two biggest, I was like, ‘You’re crazy.’ We had our boys that are 6-foot-6 (Ja’Torian Smith) and 6-foot-2 (Will Hubbard) come in and practice with them, and it was working. We felt good about it.”

While the Bobcats played lockdown defense, they also were on fire from beyond the arc. Of the 16 shots Brandywine made in the game, 10 were from three-point range. The final one came from junior Miley Young, who’s triple with 4:46 remaining pushed the Bobcat lead to 42-29.

“Brandywine is not a place where six-foot girls grow for some reason,” Hood said. “So, we have, for 15 years, been one of the top schools in the state of shooting three’s – we have to when you have a bunch of short girls. … This isn’t abnormal for these girls. They can all shoot it. We incorporate a lot of shooting into practices.”

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Brandywine never trailed, and the game was only tied twice at 2-2 and 4-4. The Bobcats closed the first quarter on a 9-0 run and wound up leading, 27-13, at halftime.

The largest lead was 21 after Brandywine scored six points in two seconds. Senior Ellie Knapp sank a ‘3’, with a foul occurring away from the shot on Lake City. This gave Brandywine an inbounds pass under the hoop, which Young converted for an old-fashioned three-point play. That put the Bobcats ahead, 36-15, with 3:22 left in the third quarter.

Young finished with a game-high 20 points. Brumitt added 14, Adeline Gill five, Knapp four, and Adelyn Drotoz, Lily Gill and Ireland Prenkert three each to round out Brandywine’s scoring.

Thursday was the first win in a state semifinal game in four attempts for the Brandywine program. They’ll look to match what the boys team did last week in winning the program’s first title Saturday. “It feels really rewarding because we’ve been working at it our whole lives,” Knapp said. “To see our hard work paying off, it means a lot.”

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Brandywine girls basketball stifles Lake City in state semifinal win