On December fifth one of the biggest downriver basketball rivalries took place. The Carlson Marauders traveled to Woodhaven with both teams having the hopes to win and start off the season well.
Coming into the game the Woodhaven Warriors had a record of one win and one loss. The Warriors were coming off a big win against Edsel Ford two days before, winning 58-55. This was very important for the Warriors because last year they shared the league title with Edsel and it was an emotional game. The leading scorers of that matchup were Landon Williamson, Brayden Williams, and Nikolas Votraw. They all looked to continue to do well in the upcoming rivalry game.
The Carlson Marauders were coming into this game with a one win and zero loss record. They looked to continue the winning streak and try to stretch a lead in the downriver standings. The Marauders were coming off a very dominant win over the Wyandotte Bears winning the game 74-23.
Coming into this game the Warriors and Marauders knew it would not be an easy win and both teams would need to fight their hardest to win. Many fans showed up for both sides for an anticipated dog fight.
Social media accounts of both schools even made edits of both teams trying to get people to go to the game and support their side.
Carlson started off the game right away with a full court press and would drop back into a zone defense once the Warriors would get past half court. The Marauders only allowed 19 points in the first half but their offense seemed to struggle. They were only able to score twelve points in the first half but it was still a close game.
The Warriors also seemed to have some offensive struggles towards the end of the first half. They started to have a little dry spell when they were unable to score any points the last three minutes of the half. With a mix of both teams good defense and offensive struggles it led to a low scoring first half.
Heading into the second half both teams still knew anyone could win this game. The coaches had to dial up good game plans for the next 16 minutes to try and make their players as successful as possible.
By the end of the third quarter it was Woodhaven 34 to Carlson 27. There were multiple players to score for each team in this quarter and it was still anyone’s game by Carlson only being down a total of three possessions. It would finally come down to the last quarter to see if Woodhaven could continue this lead and win or if Carlson would be able to fight back and take over.
The rivalry ended up coming down to the final minutes when the game was within two points and Carlson had to start fouling Woodhaven. Bradyn Harrington was able to knock down four very important free throws for the Warriors making it very hard for Carlson to get back into the game. Eventually, Woodhaven would go on and win the game 50-47.
The two leading scorers for the Warriors were Landon Williamson (18 points) and Bradyn Harrington (12 points).
Talking to starting power forward Brayden Williams on his thoughts about the game he said, “I felt like we all came together as a team very well to secure the win, all of us became unselfish to find the open man and get them a shot and everyone played their role”.
When asking starting center Nikolas Votraw on what the team can learn from the game and focus on in the future he replied, “Well, what we can learn from the Carlson game is that our guards have to take care of the ball a lot better and limit the turnovers as a team. We need to focus on every possession being a valued one meaning that we have to score every possession and try to drain as much time off the clock as possible. We also learned that we’re a pretty good team in the final minutes. We didn’t panic much and we kept our composure which led to closing out the game in the end.”
The Warriors look to take on the Taylor Griffins on Tuesday Dec. 10 at home looking to improve their record to three and one.
For the Marauders, they are going to be facing Edsel Ford on Dec. 10 looking for a league win.
