East Lansing boys basketball dominating teams with more than just a Big 3

While trying to explain the success of his East Lansing boys basketball team, coach Ray Mitchell went to the NBA.

“It’s the big three; I’ve got a Big 3,” Mitchell said. “They’ve been putting that on the NBA the last few years. Well, for high school, I definitely have a Big 3.”

In this state the Big 3 is usually a reference to Ford, General Motors and whatever Chrysler is being called these days.

But Mitchell prefers to go with LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, who provided the Miami Heat with two NBA titles.

Then he pivots to the Golden State Warriors with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, who also won multiple championships.

“That’s no knock on my other players," Mitchell said. "Actually, our whole roster is pretty good; we’re 15 deep.”

But it is the Trojans' version of the Big 3 — 6-foot-6 junior Cam Hutson, 6-4 junior Jayce Branson and 6-3 sophomore KJ Torbert — that has East Lansing sitting atop the Free Press’ first weekly boys rankings.

Two of the three Trojans have fathers who played for Michigan State basketball. Andre Hutson was the starting center on the 2000 national championship team and Kelvin Torbert was the 2001 Hal Schram Mr. Basketball Award winner from Flint Northwestern before going on to a good career at MSU.

East Lansing is a perfect 8-0 and has some impressive early season victories.

The Trojans destroyed West Bloomfield by 34 points, Birmingham Seaholm by 41, Lansing Everett by 17, Saline and Detroit King by 19.

“On any given night, one of the three can score 25, 30 points, and then on a bad night, the other ones will score 15-20,” Mitchell said. “It’s hard for teams to try to prepare for us because if you’re putting your best player on one guy, you’ve got to put your third-best on another one. They’re all just as good as each other so it’s hard for teams to match up with us man-to-man. Our guys are doing what they do.”

The coaching adjustment teams can make is switching to a zone defense, but that has not been effective, either.

“Teams are trying to zone us, but guess what, we practice more zone offense than man offense,” he said. “Our guys have really high IQ as well so we understand teams are going to zone us, so we’re prepared for that also.”

The overall balance of East Lansing’s big three has been amazing. Torbert is averaging 17.5 points, Hutson 17 and Branson 16. Branson is also a tremendous defensive player.

“It’s crazy,” Mitchell said, “but I want to say in our first seven games Cam led us twice, Jayce led us two or three times and KJ led us twice.”

Charlie Baker, at 6-4, has been a pleasant surprise as a rebounder and defensive force and the Trojans are waiting for 6-7 Christian Dunn (back problems) to make his season debut.

“That’s the scary thing,” Mitchell said. “We haven’t had our center, a four-year varsity player, play a game yet and we’re playing at a high level.

“We’re still a work in progress. We started off strong, but we still have to get better in some areas. Of course I love where we’re at, but I think we can be better.”

Now that is a scary thought.

Defending their crown

The Rockford girls are the defending Division 1 state champ, and so far, the Rams are playing like they hope to become two-time defending state champ.

Rockford has won its first seven games and none of them have been a nail-biter.

The Rams captured the Cornerstone University Holiday Tournament with a pair of impressive performances. They drilled Division 2 powerhouse Grand Rapids West Catholic, 71-57, and then came back to defeat D-2 contender Chelsea, 49-36.

“We had two tough tests,” Rockford coach Brad Wilson said. “We had highs and lows in both games, but ultimately the kids stepped up and we learned a ton and came out on top.”

Byron Center’s Lily Zeinstra is one of the top players in the state, but Rockford ganged up on her teammates to win, 62-34, despite 21 points from Zeinstra.

“We could limit her enough to where she didn’t have enough around her to get us, and we handled them pretty good,” Wilson said. “But they’ve won five or six since then. I think they’re a better team than they showed there.”

The same thing could be said about Muskegon, which Rockford trashed, 70-39, in another early-season game.

“Muskegon, skill-wise, is one of the best teams,” Wilson said. “We hit nine of 10 in the first half. We couldn’t miss and they couldn’t stop us. Muskegon is the real deal, they’re going to win a ton, I think. We just couldn’t have played better.

“We’re super happy about the first few games here.”

This is the exact start the Rams needed if they want to wind up with another state title and prevent West Bloomfield, the team the Rams narrowly defeated in last year’s final, from winning its second championship in three years.

Ironically, if Rockford and West Bloomfield meet in the state tournament again, it would be in the semifinals this time.

Just like last season, Rockford is impressively balanced. Junior point guard Anna Wypych is averaging 18 points and senior Grace Lyons, who signed with Ferris State, can be counted on to score 20 points on any given night.

Sophomore Sienna Wolfe, at 5-11, is a matchup problems for teams. She can post up and also drain 3-pointers. She nailed a school record seven 3s against West Catholic.

The surprise on this team is 5-10 sophomore Kate Higgins, who did not play as a freshman. Before the season began, Wilson compared her to Charles Barkley in terms of strength for her size and inside play.

“She’s just tearing it up right now,” Wilson said. “Rebounding, and hitting 3s and attacking the basket. She’s been a huge energy booster for us.”

Like most successful coaches, Wilson searches for the tiniest flaw in his team so he can exploit it and blow it up to keep his players’ attention no matter how well the team is playing.

The good news is, he admits it.

“I’m always kind of a paranoid person and always trying to figure out what are our shortcoming and where we need to get better,” he said. “We’re struggling to finish at the basket at times, we’re leaving some meat on the bone there.

“I think there’s some time you get up 15 or 20 and let off the gas a little bit and the other teams are able to hang around a little bit longer than you’d like. Really, it’s having that killer mentality for four quarters.”

Central station

Once again, the toughest boys basketball league in the state is the Central Division of the Detroit Catholic League and nobody is in second place.

Orchard Lake St. Mary’s was the easy pick for the preseason overall No. 1 team in the state and it could still wind up winning the Division 1 state championship, but on opening night of league play, U-D Jesuit knocked off the Eaglets, 54-40.

That opened the door for Birmingham Brother Rice to take over the No. 1 spot in D-1 in the first weekly rankings, but Friday night it was upset by Novi Detroit Catholic Central and then beaten by East Kentwood in the Mike Turner Classic at Albion College.

Warren De La Salle has two losses in league play, but with the return of junior sensation Phoenix Glassnor you can count on the Pilots to be a factor.

It is too soon to see what kind of effect the three Toledo schools — Central Catholic, St. Francis and St. Johns — will have on the league. None of the three are expected to dominate the league the way Central Catholic did on its way to another Ohio state championship but they could make things more interesting.

Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com. Follow him @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: East Lansing boys basketball dominating teams with more than Big 3