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MHSAA Photo
Iron Mountain celebrates Thursday its first semifinal victory since 1939.
Iron Mountain coach, Bucky Johnson, put a special emphasis on these words Thursday afternoon.
He may have pointed out the present time of "living" after his mountaineers ended the season for the 2018 C-clbad champion, Detroit Edison. Or maybe the "dream" his team got a shot at playing for his first men's MHSAA men's basketball championship since winning the top end of the Upper Peninsula in 1939.
Iron Mountain faced a daunting task in the first semi-final of Division 3 of the day, even for a team that has not suffered defeat this season. The Mountaineers, however, resisted Edison 60-57 in their first semifinal appearance since 1994.
"There is not a lot of U.P. teams coming to come here and experience, " Foster Wonders, the junior guard of Iron Mountain, said. "To come here and win too is something special. We are proud of that. It was incredible.
Iron Mountain (27-0) will face Pewamo-Westphalia, unbeaten, Saturday at 15:30. (Central Time) championship game.
The mountaineers have visited East Lansing a lot. On Wednesday, they spent an hour with 1973 graduate, Tom Izzo, then watched his Michigan State team train on Thursday morning.
And all those who organized the semifinal did not necessarily expect them to win, despite the perfect record they created. Edison (18-9) had more defeats than all teams except one, during his trip to Breslin this weekend, but the seven opponents in the state had clashed against divisional teams 1 and 2, and the Pioneers had just overturned first place, Flint Beecher. in their quarter-finals.
Edison then led most of the first quarter, with a seven point advantage in the second.
"In the United States you do not really see athletes like that, with their length and athleticism," Marcus Johnson, Iron Mountain Junior Goalkeeper.
But he and his teammates also had some surprises for Edison.
The first was a game plan to attack the paint, which resulted in two fouls for the first quarter of Bryce George, the 6-foot-6 athlete of the Pioneers. He was limited to 15 minutes for the match, with eight points and six rebounds, which could have been much more with more time on the ground. He had four points and four rebounds before scoring this second foul in 5:11 of play.
Then, Iron Mountain only played six players and four times in 32 minutes. Edison had 12 players with at least four minutes of action, but could not exhaust the Mountaineers.
No wonder, that's how Iron Mountain won. Johnson had an average of 23.3 points per game earlier this week, and the second guard Foster Wonders averaged 23.9. Wonders had 28 on Thursday, making almost half of his throws on the ground and 9 of his 10 free throws. Johnson had 23 points, with five points and perfection on six free throw attempts.
"One thing we knew about this team was that they were winners. If a team has gone all season without losing a basketball game, you must respect them as much as possible, Edison's coach, Brandon Neely, said. "These guys play six guys and one guy played four minutes. The thing about this team is that they play so well as a team because they know where the guys are. Teams like this are a great example to learn.
"They played like champions."
Sophomore guard Ralph Johnson came off the bench to lead Edison with 14 points, and senior striker Brian Taylor was held at 11 points and seven rebounds. Taylor, the team's top scorer coming this week, was also his only senior this season.
Edison scored 47% points in the fourth quarter, a high point in the game, and scored a score of 45-44 in 3:26. But Iron Mountain's "Makers" – as Bucky Johnson called them, going round in circles "Shooters shoot" sentence – had shot 64% of their shots in the third quarter and 50% in the fourth, including two free throws and ten consecutive free throws after Edison shot a goal.
"The coach Izzo told us that some people liked it, that some people loved it and that others lived it", Marcus Johnson said. "And we want to live it. It's an incredible feeling to reach the championship and we want to bring it home. "
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