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When the final buzzer sounded on the MLive.com Metro Detroit Game of the Week on Friday night, the Grosse Pointe South girls basketball team was a league champion for the fifith-straight time after its 56-42 over Utica Ford.
As impressive of a feat that is, South did not start receiving recognition has a top program until last year when it went all the way to the Class A state championship only to fall short by a single point.
The main the reason why South wasn't taken too seriously in the years prior was because it had spent years crawling up through the ranks of the various Macomb Area Conference divisions to ultimately become a team of envy.
How did that happen??A lot of that credit goes to South coach Kevin Richards.
When Richards took over the program for the 2007-08 season, the Blue Devils were coming off a 6-17 record the year prior and did not win a single game as part of the MAC White Division.
Quite simply, no one cared to pay attention to the Blue Devils. But almost immediately, a turnaround?occurred.
"When we took over at South, we were struggling," Richards said.??We went 11-10 in our first year and then we haven?t gone a season with less than 15 wins since. We?ve had some great kids. We?ve been very lucky.?
It?s not all luck, coach.
After the 11-5 campaign, South moved down to the MAC Blue Division and won two league title there. Then, Richards brought the program back up to the MAC White only to see the winning continue, taking two league titles in a row once again, along with a trip to the state title game.
After moving the program up the MAC Red, the highest division within the conference, South has shown that it is not done growing as a program after wrapping up the league title on Friday night. In fact, it is almost a been-there-done-that mentality for this once lowly program.
?You know, winning the league is nice,? Richards said. ?But we have set bigger goals.?
Still, with an 18-1 overall record and going 11-0 in the league so far with just one more division match left on Tuesday next week, even Richards can still be impressed by what his program accomplishes.
With division foes like Macomb Dakota and Utica Ford receiving votes in the Associated Press poll rankings, even peaking into the top 10 at certain times, South had its work cut out for it this season. But throw in a non-league schedule that included state and area powers Woodhaven, Canton, and Livonia Ladywood, South was going to make it hard on itself either way. South?s only loss of the year came to a team from Chicago (Whitney Young).
?It?s especially a nice accomplishment with how hard (it has been),? Richards said. ?We?ve had almost two or three teams every week in the AP top 10. That says a lot as far as out league. For us to be able to go through that, right now we?re 11-0 (in the league) with one game left.
?It says a lot about our kids and how hard they worked.?
It sure does, coach. In the bigger picture, it says much more about you.
end of the world end of the world december 21 2012 norad 12/21/12 winter solstice Jabari Parker
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