NOVI — Facing Farmington Hills Mercy, you have to be prepared for two things: You have to know that whatever you try to do, they’re going to counterpunch extraordinarily quickly, and get out and run, and secondly, you have to know that they’re just as prepared for you.
That preparation showed, as Novi’s zone defense barely slowed down the Catholic League champions, who racked up 20 fast-break points in a 55-38 win in Wednesday’s Division 1 district semifinals, beating the Wildcats on their home floor.
The Marlins (13-3) blitzed out to a 35-15 halftime lead, and never looked back, moving on to Friday’s district finals, where they’ll face North Farmington (6-9), a 47-41 winner over Farmington in the night’s second game.
“Gary (Morris) coaches them up. We heard they started watching film on us three weeks ago, because of the zone, and they managed the zone, frankly, better than almost anyone. Size helps, but they did a very nice job against it. They were prepared for it. We knew they would be, but that’s kind of our deal,” said Novi coach CJ Aro, impressed with the way the Marlins sliced through his team’s defense. “Nobody’s handled that zone — Hartland didn’t handle it like that, Brighton didn’t.”
It helped, too, that the Marlins got plenty of looks in the open floor, getting out and running whenever possible, despite a short bench. There were two notable moments in the third quarter, where it appeared Novi had a fast break going, only to have the Marlins tip the ball away, and instantly send it in the other direction for a layup.
“We try to generally push the ball up the floor. We thought we could. We like to play fast — our numbers are dwindling a little bit, but we still like to play that way. We think it’s our best way to play. We think it energizes us. We like to get up the floor defensively, but also push it on offense,” Morris said. “That first half, I thought we were really good, making shots. Hitting the open player, and I thought we really defended well. I thought that half, as far as playing both ends of the floor, was pretty good for us.”
It helps, too, that the Marlins have a veteran floor general in senior Alexis Roberts, who was the one with her hand on the throttle for the Mercy offense.
“She’s tough, and she does her thing. She’s a coach on the floor. She knows, always, when to push and when not to push,” Aro said. “She’s so underrated. I know maybe because of her size, she doesn’t get the same (recruiting) looks, but I was telling Gary before the game that I’ve watched her three, four times before this. She just controls the game. She never is rattled. She’s open, she makes the shot. She’s just very good.
“She’s the key to their team, in my opinion. If you can slow her down, you have a chance, but as you saw in the second quarter, she took over. Little jump shot, little jump shot, drop. It kills us. And that’s what we talked about — you gotta keep her out, and she did a good job of not going away.”Mercy led 15-8 after one quarter, and outscored Novi 20-7 in the second quarter to lead by 20 at the break. But Mercy outscored the Wildcats by just one in the third, going into the fourth with a 47-26 lead, and Novi outscored Mercy 12-8 in the final period.
That play-to-the-end mentality made it easier for Mercy to never have to take its foot off the gas.
“Credit to Novi — they kept playing. You’re down 20 at the half, and you could kind of just say ‘OK, it’s not our night.’ And they played all the way to the end,” said Morris, who was monitoring his kids’ foul troubles in the first half. “We had two kids with two (fouls) in the first half, so we had to be mindful of that. Even that kind of altered how we were going to start off the second half, because we were like ‘Well, we don’t want them to get their third.’ We were in good position, so let’s do something different.”
With warmer weather heating up gyms, that’s becoming a factor, as well.
“We kept saying as coaches, ‘We’re not moving our feet like we were in the first half,’ and it might’ve been that we were a bit tired,” said Morris.
The short benches played both ways: The Wildcats had four players listed as ‘DNP’ in the scorebook, for various reasons, while the Marlins had five.
“Short bench kind of hurt us a bit tonight, because we just couldn’t make those changes when kids got tired, but all in all, I thought the kids played well,” Aro said. “No, they’re very good. They’re very good. They’re missing kids, we’re missing kids. We’re happy to be able to play, honestly, lucky to be able to compete. We wanted to finish our season competitively. … We led every single game in the second half, except Hartland, both times. This team is very competitive, but they just don’t know how to win yet. We have a freshman point guard (Anna Lindsey), we’re young. We only graduate two seniors, and hopefully they’ll get better over the summer, and we’ll be competitive next year.”
One of those seniors, Maria Fernandez, led the Wildcats with 13 points, while junior Sammy Maday and Lindsey had 11 each. Maya White and Jill Smith had 12 each to lead Mercy, while Ellie Tisko had 10, and Roberts and Sarah Cunningham had nine each.