Negaunee’s Dre Tuominen, left, drives to the basket with Iron Mountain’s Charlie Gerhard defending during the Class C regional championship game played at Escanaba High School on Wednesday evening. (Iron Mountain Daily News photo by Adam Niemi)

“It’s just kind of a gut thing and you got to have trust in your kids sometimes.” — Dan Waterman, Negaunee coach, after both teams’ stars got into early foul trouble

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ESCANABA — Negaunee overcame a 10-point first-half deficit to win the Class C regional championship 53-43 over Iron Mountain on Wednesday.

Negaunee (20-4) plays Manton (20-4) at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Petoskey in the state quarterfinals, with that winner advancing to play at Michigan State University later next week.

Foul trouble plagued the Mountaineers (20-4) in the second half.

Iron Mountain collected 22 fouls in total to Negaunee’s seven with the Mountaineers’ Carson Wonders drawing three alone in the first quarter.

In the fourth, Iron Mountain had four players on the floor with three or more fouls — and that was after Jaden Vicenzi had fouled out.

As a result of all the fouls, Negaunee shot 19 of 25 at the free-throw line, while IM shot and made just three.

“When you come down to it, when the other team shoots 25 free throws and you shoot three, the difference is at the free-throw line,” Iron Mountain coach Bucky Johnson said. “Why? I don’t know. I guess that’s for everybody to speculate. It’s tough to overcome a difference of 25 free throws to three attempts. It’s a big difference.”

Despite his team not drawing lots of fouls overall, Negaunee’s Dre Tuominen was called for three in the game’s opening four minutes.

“Kind of an unorthodox game in that sense with Dre picking up three in the first quarter,” Negaunee coach Dan Waterman said. “With Wonders for them picking up three, not much after that.

“At that point as a coach, there’s no book for it, it’s just kind of a gut thing and you got to have trust in your kids sometimes. Bucky left Carson out and I left Dre out and they both managed to play through it.”

The Mountaineers perplexed the Miners’ offense, keeping Tuominen to the outside and forcing wingers to pick the inside to get 6-foot-7 Trent Bell open underneath. Iron Mountain’s defense was a surprise to Waterman.

“Their defense threw off our game plan. We weren’t expecting to see quote-unquote ‘junk defense.’ It was a little Y-and-one, almost,” Waterman said. “We prepared for box-and-one and we prepared for triangle-two, expecting to see it at some point this year and hadn’t run across that yet. That was a nice adjustment by them.”

Bell finished with 19 points while Tuominen added 18. Tuominen scored 12 of his points in the fourth quarter, all on free throws.

Wonders led Iron Mountain with 19 points in his final game as a Mountaineer, finishing his career with 1,468 points. Wonders passed Gabe Leonard’s 1,440-point mark in Iron Mountain’s win over Newberry in the regional semifinals on Monday.

“It’s a great accomplishment for me,” Wonders said. “My dad couldn’t do it and I came and did it. I don’t think it’s going to be there for long.”

Wonders said picking up three fouls in the first quarter made him temper his game.

“I had to be, obviously, more careful. I had to try not to pick up my fourth foul,” he said. “That limited me on defense because I couldn’t be as aggressive as I usually like to be. It was hard driving into the lane knowing they were going to try getting that fourth foul on me. It made me hesitate and that kind of limits my game.”

The Negaunee defense tightened up around the basket in the second half. The flurry of whistles against the Mountaineers made them visibly frustrated and trying to draw fouls to change momentum, but to no avail.

“I thought our defense was pretty good down there. They weren’t getting as many clean looks as they were earlier in the game. That might have contributed to the frustration,” Waterman said. “The other decision that a coach has to make is when you pull the ball out and started playing catch with it and force them to play man-to-man. Once we did that, it kind of changed the complexion of the game.

“It’s frustrating when you’ve worked so hard and you’ve got to chase in that situation. I think that’s what you were seeing out of them.”