BERKLEY – The Royal Oak Ravens ground out a 37-25 win over the Berkley Bears in Monday’s Oakland Activities Association crossover contest.

It was a scrappy, defensive game from the start. Neither team could maintain any consistent offensive rhythm or string together any long runs as the defenses contested every shot, pass, and dribble from start to finish. Berkley made four field goals in the opening quarter and led 10-7 when the first quarter ended.

“That got away from us,” Berkley head coach Clay Shaver said. “We just came out okay, and then we kind of flattened out pretty quick. But credit to Royal Oak. Their coach is awesome.”

From there, the Ravens’ defense was smothering, only allowing the Bears just four more field goals over the final three quarters.

“We are going to live in the world of defend, defend, defend, and try to find enough offense to get the job done,” Ravens head coach Brian Sopata said. That’s a team that, if you look at their most recent scores, they’re putting up 50, 60 points a night. Holding them to that amount (25 points) was a heck of an effort on our end. I think our kids really executed what our game plan was.”

Royal Oak, meanwhile, scratched out just enough offense of its own and stretched the lead to 29-20 by the end of the third quarter before largely running out the clock in the fourth quarter.

Hannah Saunders had 11 points for Royal Oak, while Maddie Lawrence added nine and Lucy Freytag had eight for the Ravens, who spread the stats around a bit more.

“When you’ve got multiple kids scoring, even if it’s not a ton, they can feed off of that, feed off each other,” Sopata said.

Avery Weingarden had 11 points for Berkley, but no one else had more than six points for the Bears.

Similarly, Royal Oak outrebounded the Bears 30-20, but no Raven had more than the six rebounds collected by Lydia Dickens, and four Ravens had at least four rebounds. Berkley got 10 rebounds from Caleigh Tracey, but the rest of the team had just 10 rebounds as a group.

The win evens Royal Oak’s record at 7-7. The Ravens sit second in the OAA White and resume league play on Thursday with a trip to Troy to face the Colts, which kicks off a string of three straight divisional games for Royal Oak.

Photo gallery of Berkley vs. Royal Oak in OAA girls hoops action

“Our last two times out, we’ve played really well,” Sopata said. “It’s cliché, but it’s build for the next one. We’ve got to go to Troy Thursday. There’s nothing easy about that one.” He added that, “I’m really pleased at our girls stepping up, executing what we asked them to do, believing in it, and they worked their way through it in a game that was not pretty. But we’ll take it.”

Berkley (10-6, 6-2) remains second in the OAA Blue. The Bears are back into league play on Wednesday with a road test against Rochester Adams. After senior night on Friday against Detroit Voyager Prep, the Bears will then host Avondale next Tuesday in a must-win matchup if they are to have any chance of catching the first place Yellowjackets (12-2, 8-0).

“They (Adams) want to slow you down. (Adams head coach Joe Malburg) knows his personnel, and he knows right now they’re going to win by slowing you down and beating you with defense. So that will probably be a long night,” Shaver said. “We had that control your own destiny thing, and that kind of went by the wayside on Friday (by losing to Southfield A&T). But the good news is that there are a lot of good teams in the Blue so anything can happen on any night."

WHITE LAKE – Lakeland won a defensive struggle over Walled Lake Northern 41-34 Friday night in Lakes Valley Conference play.

The game had the feel of a neck-and-neck battle right from the start. The teams combined for just seven points in the entire first quarter – and three of those came on a buzzer-beater 3-pointer by Chase Carson to give the Eagles a 5-2 lead after the opening period.

The offenses did a bit better in the succeeding quarters, but neither team could sustain anything resembling a rhythm on offense for more than a couple of possessions. Walled Lake Northern led only once, and briefly, at 8-7 in the second quarter, but the Eagles scored the next six points to take a 13-8 lead, and the Knights trailed the rest of the way, though they always stayed close. Each team’s swarming, physical defense leant a frenetic yet grinding tone to the game where the offenses were consistently struggling to find open shots or to produce points.

“That’s how it always is in this Battle of Bogie Lake – a low-scoring, tightly-contested physical battle, and this one didn’t disappoint. That’s for sure,” Eagles head coach Ron Thompson said. “They’re going to do what they do. We’re going to do what we do. No surprises.”

But once the second half rolled around, 6-foot-5 senior Nsikan Usen got rolling, and the Eagles always had an answer whenever the Knights started to creep close on the scoreboard.

“I think he (Usen) is a hard guy to referee because he’s bigger, stronger than a lot of guys out there. I think he gets beat up everywhere he goes, but he did a really nice job of handling the pressure, handling the physicality and not complaining and getting things done,” Thompson said.

Usen led the field with 16 points and eight rebounds. Ethan Rowley finished with seven points and seven rebounds, while Hayden Cross tallied eight points as Lakeland spread out the scoring.

Walled Lake Northern was led by seven points from Stone Seyburn and six points from E. J. Milan. But they couldn’t sustain any kind of offense all night, and that kept the Eagles just out of reach even when the Knights were playing well defensively.

“We have to score if we want to win,” Knights head coach Ryan Negoshian said. “We kind of hang our hats on playing solid defense and getting after it, but offensively if you want to win, you have to score. That’s the name of the game. and we just can’t score.”

Photo gallery from Lakeland vs. Walled Lake Northern in LVC boys hoops action

Lakeland (9-6 overall, 6-4 LVC) continues conference play next Tuesday when it travels to South Lyon East to face the Cougars.

“I thought it was a great team game. I think everybody stepped up and did what they were supposed to do. Everybody knew their role and did it,” Thompson said. “I thought all the guys played really well.”

Walled Lake Northern (5-10 overall, 4-6 LVC) will try to snap a four-game losing streak when the Knights host South Lyon on Tuesday.

“We’ve got to get back to basics, to making shots, to catching the ball ready to score, to passing the ball quicker, to doing fundamental things that basketball teams need to do that we are not executing right now,” Negoshian said. “We have the ability to do it, which is the frustrating part. We have done it. We know we can do it. We’re just not doing it right now.”

WHITE LAKE – The White Lake Lakeland Eagles led from start to finish, knocking off the Walled Lake Northern Knights 43-33 in a key Lakes Valley Conference contest Friday evening.

The game was a defensive battle from the start. The teams are very familiar with each other, and it showed from the start.

“We’ve played them (Walled Lake Northern) three times last year, twice this year. We know each other so well. We have a lot of experienced players that came back, so we all know each other. I’m calling out their plays. They’re calling out our plays. That’s what it is when you play a rival like that,” Lakeland head coach Mike Leitheim said. “We just know each other so well, and both teams work so hard that it’s tough to get a good look sometimes.”

Neither team made a field goal in the first four minutes of the game, and the score was just 15-8 Lakeland at halftime.

“Lakeland basketball doesn’t have to be pretty,” Leitheim said. “We’re about whatever we can do to have one more point than the opponent at the end of the game. The first half, I went in the locker room, in a 15-8 game, and we all agreed that was beautiful basketball, because we know that sometimes we have to win that way, and we’re used to winning that way.”

Lakeland kept driving toward the basket, and in the fourth quarter in particular it finally paid off. Whereas the Knights were able to stop the Eagles and force them into bad shots in the first half, by the fourth quarter, those Lakeland drives started to draw fouls, and the Eagles made their foul shots, going 12-for-16 from the free throw line in the fourth quarter to hold the Knights. Aubrin Miller did most of the damage, making 8 of 10 free throws in that final stanza, and canning 10 of 12 on the night.

Walled Lake Northern hung around much of the evening. After getting down 13-2 by the middle of the second quarter, the Knights started chipping away. Twice they had the margin down to a single possession early in the fourth quarter, but they could never quite catch up.

Amal Younes led all scorers with 21 points for Walled Lake Northern, but the Knights couldn’t get anyone else going to help offset Lakeland’s balance.

“Right now, we’re just not doing a very good job of executing a game plan and paying attention to the little details that we need to be paying attention to to beat good teams like that. Early in the year, we did,” Knights head coach Joshua Pees said. “We’re just not there right now. We’ve got to get back to the way we were at the beginning of the year.”

Miller led Lakeland with 15 points. Alena Tiernan chipped in 10 points and Peyton Baer added seven points for the Eagles.

With the win, Lakeland improves to 9-3 overall and 7-1 in the LVC to maintain its chase of South Lyon (11-1, 8-1), who inched back ahead for the league lead by a half-game with a victory over Milford Friday.

Photos of Lakeland vs. Walled Lake Northern in LVC girls hoops action

The Eagles will continue league play on Tuesday when they host South Lyon East.

“I’m just really proud. Our senior group has been so tough. We’re seniors and juniors. We’re experienced,” Leitheim said. “We’ve been through the grind, so it’s just these are the kinds of games they love to be a part of.”

Walled Lake Northern slips to 8-5 overall and 4-3 in league play.

“You don’t lose. I tell the girls all the time we don’t lose games, we only learn. So this was a good game to learn from, correct our mistakes, and come back and get them next time,” Pees said.

The Knights travel to South Lyon on Tuesday for another important league contest.  Walled Lake Northern handed South Lyon its only conference loss earlier in the year.

FRASER – The Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood Cranes scored three goals in the first period then held off a late comeback to defeat the Bloomfield-Birmingham Black Hawks 3-2 in the Michigan Girls High School Hockey League College Showcase on Saturday morning.

“I really liked our perseverance. We didn’t really have too many highs, too many lows. We played a solid game all three periods,” Cranes head coach Paul Marcus said. “Bloomfield-Birmingham had a nice push there in the third period, but I think we played a nice even-keeled game that turned out to be a close one in the end.”

The Cranes dominated much of the first period and scored all three of their goals in a span of just under five minutes during the middle of the period. Julia Asfor set up Abbey Hardey to get things going for Cranbrook, threading a pass across the deep slot that found Hardey on the back side, and she quickly rammed it home to give Cranbrook a 1-0 lead.

Lela Lantigua added a pair of goals for Cranbrook less than a minute apart to give the Cranes their three-goal lead with 3:58 to play in the opening frame.

But the Black Hawks slowly righted the ship. Bloomfield-Birmingham managed to get out of the first period without further damage and played better in each succeeding period, saving their best for the final one.

Bloomfield-Birmingham started to get chances from in deep as opposed to the perimeter, and the goals began to come. The Black Hawks got on the board with 6:26 to play in the third period when Lily Ehmann walked the puck down the left side and snapped a shot home from in close to narrow the gap to two. Paige Garder then cut the deficit to just one with 2:34 to play when she scored a wraparound goal.

“The third period we started playing more as a team. I think we had a little more individual play in the first two periods,” Black Hawks assistant coach Chris Koch said. “It slowly came together, getting the puck in deep, putting pressure on them, and that seemed to be our success there.”

But the Cranes had enough to see off the Black Hawks in the end, in part due to their face-off dominance. The Cranes had a clear edge on faceoffs much of the game, and that translated into more possession and more shots.

“Obviously, (face-offs) are a critical component to the game,” Marcus said. “Really, in all three zones, it’s highly important to maintain possession. In our own zone, but also when you win those face-offs in the forward zone, it creates better opportunities of driving the net.”

Photos of Cranbrook-Kingswood vs. Bloomfield-Birmingham at the Michigan Girls High School Hockey League College Showcase

Cranbrook out-shot the Black Hawks 32-19 in the game, though most of that margin came in the Cranes’ dominant first period where they piled up a 16-6 edge.

With the win, Cranbrook evens its record at 5-3. The Cranes return to divisional action on Friday when they host Sacred Heart at Wallace Ice Arena.

Bloomfield-Birmingham is now 6-5 on the season. The Black Hawks faced a quick turnaround, hosting Washtenaw United on Sunday in a divisional matchup.

“I just want to give it all to the girls,” Koch said. “We have a couple of new girls that have come into the hockey program, and they’re really learning from some of these veterans that are out there. I think it says a lot for this program and the girls that have all been through it to be able build all these girls up, build up that confidence, and bring this team together.”

ORCHARD LAKE – The Detroit Catholic Central Shamrocks ran their overall winning streak to 33 games with a 5-2 win over the host Orchard Lake St. Mary’s Eaglets on Saturday night.

The Shamrocks took the lead for good with 2:54 remaining in the second period. Reese Hemme took a stretch pass and broke in on goal. St. Mary’s goalie Will Keane made a terrific save, but Hemme retrieved the puck in the corner and found Noah Gumma for a backhanded shot. By that time, the Shamrocks had traffic in front of Keane and Gumma’s shot threaded through everyone and snuck past Keane, giving Catholic Central a 3-2 lead.

The Shamrocks took that advantage into the third period where they really put the clamps down on the Eaglets. Catholic Central outshot St. Mary’s 21-4 in the last period and added goals from Sam Wolak and Hemme to seal the deal.

It was a finish to the contest that started much differently than it ended. St. Mary’s dominated early, winning most of the face-offs as it controlled the play. Even after Catholic Central weathered the storm early and got on the board with its first shot on goal six minutes into the game, St. Mary’s kept pushing. Corbin Kundinger tied the game for the Eaglets just 1:24 after the Shamrocks had taken the lead, and Jack Squire’s power-play goal gave St. Mary’s the lead 2-1 heading into the first intermission.

“Our whole discipline of our game completely changed at that point,” Eaglets head coach Brian Klanow said. “We got our dander up the last four or five minutes of the third period. If we had maintained that pace and that commitment, we would have made this a real game.”

Over the final two periods, Catholic Central simply found another gear through its depth and determination. The Shamrocks went on to outshoot the Eaglets by a 3-to-1 margin for the game, 51-17, as they simply ground out yet another win. Jack Dorgan and Connor Laird also scored for the Shamrocks, whose overall depth helped them wear down the Eaglets.

“I didn’t like our first period. I thought they (St. Mary’s) brough a lot of energy,” Shamrocks head coach Brandon Kaleniecki said. “But being (down) 2-1 was actually probably a good thing for us because we needed to wake up. We weren’t playing great. The second and third period we were way better, way more engaged, more intensity, quicker on pucks, and that really turned the game in our favor from the second period on.”

Goalie Will Keane was the Eaglets’ standout performer, stopping 46 shots and keeping St. Mary’s hanging around on the scoreboard even as the ice titled more and more towards Catholic Central as the game progressed.

Detroit Catholic Central is now 14-0 on the year and 4-0 in the Michigan Interscholastic Hockey League, sitting atop the White Division.

Photos from Detroit Catholic Central vs. Orchard Lake St. Mary’s in MIHL hockey action

“It’s hard to win any game. Any night it’s hard to win a hockey game, so we can’t take that for granted. We talk about just being engaged at the puck drop for that night. That’s all you can control is the game you’re playing that night. For our group, we’ve set a standard of how we want to play,” Kaleniecki said. “For us, we expect certain things, and the results come with that of course. But we don’t really try to focus on that. We focus on how we played and did we play up to the intensity level, the energy level that we expect. And if we do, good things tend to happen like some of the winning streaks.”

The Shamrocks will continue to put their winning streak on the line Wednesday when they continue league play against Grosse Pointe South.

St. Mary’s is now 9-2-1 overall and 5-2 in the MIHL, good for first place in the Gold Division.

The Eaglets are also back in action Wednesday when they host Port Huron Northern in another league game.

WATERFORD – The Lakeland Eagles picked up a crucial 5-3 win over Lakes Area United in a Lakes Valley Conference showdown Saturday evening.

Adam Trzcinski had a natural hat trick to pace the Eagles, who went ahead for good early in the second period when Vince Modica fired a puck from the blue line off the end boards and Trzcinski swatted the rebound into the net to give Lakeland a 2-1 lead.

Lakeland extended its lead with 8:52 to play in the middle period when Nate Dell fed a perfect saucer pass over a defenseman’s stick that found Trzcinski driving the net in transition and Trzcinski deposited the puck neatly in the left side to make it 3-1. He then added his third goal early in the third period to give Lakeland a 4-1 lead.

To its credit, Lakes Area would not go without a fight. Barely a minute after Trzcinski completed his hat trick, Lakes Area cashed in a turnover at the blue line when Carl Merkle ripped a shot from the high slot that found the top corner to make it 4-2.

The finish was tight with Lakes Area pulling its goalie with 2:21 to play and pressing for the goals necessary to tie things up. But Lakeland would not be denied in a game it almost had to have to maintain any hope of getting a piece of the league title, seeing off the remaining minutes to clinch the win.

Despite the rivalry and the stakes, both teams played a very disciplined game that saw just four penalties and only two power plays.

“The refs let us play, which I personally like,” Lakeland head coach Tim Ronayne said. “And it just worked out. It was a back-and-forth game. We were never comfortable, so you’ve just go to keep coming.”

“Both of our teams always play disciplined games. We both have solid, physical play, but neither is a dirty team. So it’s a fun game,” Lakes Area United head coach John McMahon said. “So I think overall, it’s always a good game playing against them.”

In the end, Lakeland’s forecheck was just a little too much for Lakes Area on the night. The Eagles dominated the zone time and the shot totals – especially in the middle period where they built their lead.

“Missing two guys in the lineup today, it definitely threw off our forward set,” McMahon said. “It was our first game without those two guys. It put a little kink in the game today, but I feel like we still battled pretty well.”

The game had been 1-1 after the first period with Zane Austin opening the scoring for Lakeland and Gavin Grondin tying things up for Lakes Area as the game ebbed and flowed in the opening period.

Photos from Lakeland vs. Lakes Area United in LVC hockey action

With the win, Lakeland (6-5 overall) is now 4-1 in the LVC and trails Lakes Area by just a half game in the league standings.

“It was a great team effort, solid play from everybody. They knew what was on the line. There’s no wiggle room. So we did what we had to do and we had solid play. It was very good,” Ronayne said.

Saturday's defeat drops Lakes Area to 9-2 overall and 5-1 in LVC play. The teams have now split their two league contests with Lakes Area winning 5-2 earlier this season.

Both teams are off until after the holidays when they will both resume their quests for the conference title in what continues to be a very tight title chase. Lakeland returns to action at Saginaw Heritage on Jan. 4, while Lakes Area also takes back to the ice the same evening at home against Lenawee United.