×

Dylan Hanninen, River Shumate lead Republic-Michigamme Hawks to boys basketball win at Mid Peninsula

Mid Peninsula’s Dylan Trudell, left, goes for a layup against Republic-Michigamme’s Jake Carlson during the third quarter Thursday in the Wolverines’ gym in St. Nicholas. (Escanaba Daily Press photo by Avery Bundgaard)

ST. NICHOLAS — A 3-point attempt by Mid Peninsula’s Terry Brower was off the mark as the Republic-Michigamme boys’ basketball team held on for a 40-37 victory over the Wolverines on Thursday night.

“We played good defense and I knew we had to keep them around 40 (points) if we wanted to win this game and we ended up doing that,” Hawks coach Mario Marana said. “We knew we had our hands full with the Brower kid.

“He’s a great player and he has the green light from anywhere. I feel we handled him very well.”

The Hawks didn’t shut Brower down completely, but they held him to eight points on 3-of-15 shooting from the floor.

“River Shumate played a heck of a game on Brower on the defensive end,” Marana said. “I don’t know what he did offensively, but defensively I know he played a heck of a game for us.”

Dylan Hanninen led the Hawks offense with 22 points, while Billy Carlson paced the Wolverines with 12 and Zach Englund added 11.

The Hawks started fast, going up 6-0 before Englund scored five straight points to cut the deficit to one. The Wolverines kept rolling as they took a 12-11 lead into the second quarter.

The second period was pretty even with each team trading baskets. The Hawks took a three-point lead at one point and led 23-21 at halftime.

The game slowed down in the third quarter as both teams kept it pretty even but R-M took a 30-29 lead into the final period.

The Hawks held a one-point lead entering the fourth quarter, but quickly went up by five as they hit on their first three shots while Mid Pen went 0 for 7.

The Wolverines then started to feed Carlson down low as he scored eight straight points including the bucket that put Mid Pen up by a point with 1:15 remaining.

“Billy has that knack inside and that’s what I told the refs that they’re all over him,” Mid Pen coach Mark Branstrom said. “He doesn’t jump but he’s just smooth inside. He waits and waits and then he goes up.

“As long as they were going to let us get it to him we were going to keep pounding it inside.”

Shumate connected on a layup with 55 seconds remaining to put the Hawks up for good. The Wolverines missed all four of their shots down the stretch and had to foul late.

Republic made 2 of 4 free throws, including a miss on a front end of a 1-and-1 that gave Mid Pen the chance to tie the game with five seconds left.

“They showed me a lot of character there,” Branstrom said about his charges. “We have two young sophomores at the guards and we do have three seniors out there, but the two sophomores out there did what they needed to do and made some good passes.

“Some of the things that didn’t work out for us was we did have a couple turnovers and we had some mistakes on the offensive end. Overall it was one of our better games and it could have gone either way.”

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper *
   

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today