Stallions rediscover winning ways, not done yet By Jon Malavolti The Sterling Heights High boys basketball team received a rude welcome from the Macomb Area Conference Gold Division last year. The Stallions, new to the league after dropping in from the MAC Blue where they had competed in previous seasons, finished the year 0-12. Those struggles have since inspired the squad to succeed this season. At the halfway point of league play, Sterling was tied for third at 3-3 in the division at press time. “They kind of took last year as a growing experience and just learned from it,” Sterling coach Mike Griffin said. “And they’ve applied a lot of their lessons learned last year.” “It just really motivated us to work harder, because we knew what was coming up,” senior Pat Finegan said. “We knew how tough the teams were, so we knew how much better we had to be to win. It feels good to win, and every game we lost (this season), we were still competitive even, so that’s a good feeling.” Looking ahead to the second half of division play, the Stallions hope to continue their climb uphill. “We want to continue to be tough at home — we’ve only lost once at home out of six games,” Griffin said. “We want to try and get some more road victories, and we want to try and be a factor in the division by the time its all said and done. Hopefully, we can knock off one of the big boys.” Senior center Adam Ring echoed his coach’s sentiments and further noted how much the team’s play in the final third of the regular season can affect their chances of advancing in the postseason. “We just want to finish out strong,” Ring said. “(It will) give us some momentum if we get a good streak going at the end of the season and get going pretty good in the playoffs.” Griffin said Ring is the team’s “main guy that we try to feed the ball into,” but he’s still looking for some more consistent offensive threats to emerge. “We’ve got to find ways to generate more points,” the coach said. “We’ve got to get our offense caught up with our defense. We have balanced scoring, but we lack a go-to guy right now to kind of feed in the clutch. “There are a couple guys coming about, so we’ll see who it is here.” Finding someone to put more points on the board for the Stallions is key for their fast-paced offense. “We’ve just been an up-tempo, use-our-depth type of team,” Griffin said. “We press, we run. We’ve got about 13 guys who are at a similar level, and we just role people in and out. It’s a fun style for the kids and an exciting brand (of basketball).” Check out the Stallions’ high-paced offense in action as they host MAC Gold rival Warren Mott at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 11. You can reach Sports Writer Jon Malavolti at jmalavolti@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1040. |
