GARDEN CORNERS — Superior Central relied on Joe Heinonen and solid rebounding to defeat the Big Bay de Noc boys’ basketball team 54-33 Monday in both teams’ season openers.

Heinonen scored 21 points and the Cougars had a big rebounding advantage.

“Between Heinonen and (Roubens) Fink, they cleaned up and controlled the boards,” Big Bay coach Devin Lawrence said. “Our rebounding was not good. They had a lot of second and third attempts that killed us.”

DJ Johns and Fink each scored eight points for the Cougars, who led 25-15 at halftime and 37-24 after three quarters.

Alex LaLonde scored nine points and Kellen Thill added eight points for Big Bay, which had 21 turnovers and shot 27 percent from the field.

The Cougars visit Munising Monday.

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Wakefield-Marenisco 69, Republic-Michigamme 43

At Republic, the Hawks stayed within single digits for most of the first three quarters before R-M gave up a big fourth quarter.

Dylan Hanninen led R-M with 12 points, while Wakefield’s Mason Saubert and Jacob Suzik had 24 and 22 points, respectively.

The Hawks were only down seven points at the half, 28-21, but W-M started to pad its lead in the third before outscoring R-M 23-8 in the fourth to close it out.

“It was a close game at halftime,” R-M head coach Mario Marana said. “Then they hit some deep 3s that took the wind out of us and we couldn’t get back out of it. We found some stuff to work on and we’ll get better.”

The Hawks host Ontonagon on Thursday.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Writer Ryan Stieg with contributions from the Escanaba Daily Press. Stieg’s email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.