STATE CHAMPS! Top 20 Girls Basketball Rankings: Week Of January 29th, 2023

STATE CHAMPS! Big Lexi’s Top 20 Team Rankings – Week of January 22nd, 2023

Lexi Ayala – Twitter @LexiReyne1523

#1 Grand Rapids West Catholic – Division 2

With the win over Rockford, West Catholic stays in the top spot. Still undefeated, over the last week, West Catholic walked through Hamilton (10-4) 71-32 and Holland Christian (10-5) 48-31. Cadence Dykstra had a nice stat line vs Hamilton: 14 points, 8 assists, 9 steals and 6 rebounds. Cadence also scored 17 against Holland Christian, while Elisha Dykstra and Reese Polega each had 9 points.

#2 Rockford – Division 1

Rockford is on a 6-game winning streak.  Last week, Rockford beat Jenison 69-37 and beat West Ottawa (#9 last week) 61-47.  Rockford was down at the half but came back to get the win despite a strong performance by West Ottawa’s Gabby Reynolds game high 28 points.  Rockford was led to victory by the Anna Wypych sisters. Anna tallied 19 points and Alyssa chipped in 12 points.

 #3 Lake Fenton – Division 2

 Lake Fenton posted a dominant win over Brandon 80-24.  Lake Fenton is probably the most complete team in the mitten state.   Here is why I say that all 10 roster players in this game played double digit minutes: 10, 10, 13, 14, 12, 14, 17, 18, 20 and 14.  Kendyl Smith had a double-double with 14 points, 10 assists and 4 steals.  McKenna Clement had 5 points, 10 boards, 1 steal and 1 block.

 #4 Renaissance – Division 1

Renaissance defeated Detroit Cass Tech (8-6) in a competitive battle 50-46.  Navaeha Otis led things for Renaissance with 14 points, Amayah Espanol had 12 points.  In the big game I was looking forward to, Renaissance got the W over last week’s #9 East Grand Rapids 58-39. Amayah Espanol led the Phoenix with 16 points and Christian Sanders had 15 points, but it was the Phoenix defense that set the tone holding East Grand Rapids to their 2nd lowest point total this season by holding the future Wolverine Macy Brown to just 11 points.

 #5 West Bloomfield – Division 1

West Bloomfield beat Lake Orion 60-20.  Summer Davis had 14 points, 5 boards, 4 assists and 5 steals.  Indya Davis had 18 points, 6 boards and 4 steals.  Against Groves, it was the three-headed monster that dominated.  Sydney Hendrix with 18 points, 5 rebounds and 1 assist.  Summer Davis with 22 points, 5 boards and 9 steals. And finally, Indya Davis with 21 points, 12 rebounds, 5 steals, 2 assists and 2 blocks. West Bloomfield is consistently having those three players show up and put up numbers every game at this point.  Also, one of their two losses was to the South Bend Indiana team and West Bloomfield is one of only two teams to even be within 15 points in their loss.  South Bend is ranked #11 nationally by Max Preps and they’re Indiana’s reigning state champs, so definitely not a loss to be looked down upon whatsoever.

 #6 Flint Carman-Ainsworth – Division 1

#7 Farmington Hills Mercy – Division 1

Mercy went 1-1 over the last couple games, but I personally felt like the loss against Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard was just one of those ‘everything going wrong’ type of games for Mercy, so I’m keeping them in Big Lexi’s Big 10.  The win over Divine Child 79-70 was an instant classic game.  The first half had 9 ties and 8 lead changes ending with a 33-32 Mercy halftime lead. Mercy even had a 16-point lead in the 2nd half, but Divine Child worked themselves back into the game and tied it up with 12.3 seconds left. However, it was Mercy who owned overtime behind a great finish by Aizlyn Albanese who scored 14 of 16 points in OT and had 45 of the teams 79 points with 4 triples and 15-17 from the charity stripe.

 #8 Chelsea – Division 2

Chelsea had two victories over Tecumseh 70-54, and Adrian 69-21. The win over Tecumseh was a solid victory for Chelsea but became even better when Megan McCalla scored 26 points and in doing so, she eclipsed the career 1,000 point mark in her career!!

#9 DeWitt – Division 1

Haslett, still undefeated, had victories over Mason 55-26 and Brighton 52-32 in the last week.  Grace Isenhath put up 16 points, 5 boards and 5 dimes vs Mason.  Emily Homan posted 20 points, 6 boards and 3 steals. Maddie Fant had 7 points and 6 steals. They also recently had one of their biggest wins of the season over Dewitt.

Everyone’s kind of been counting out Detroit Edison after they started the season off with two losses, and I get it because there’s still a whole bunch of undefeated teams out there that haven’t even made the rankings, but I want to remind everyone that DEPSA ain’t new to this… they true to this but forreal, DEPSA’s only two losses this year are both to out of state teams, Bolingbrook and Whitney Young of Illinois two really tough teams. DEPSA is 5 time back-to-back-to-back-to-back state champs and has had the last 4 Miss. Basketball’s of Michigan come from this school. I’m not counting them out.

Remaining Top 20

#11 Frankenmuth – Division 2

#12 Escanaba – Division 2

#13 North Farmington – Division 1

#14 DeWitt – Division 1

#15 Goodrich – Division 2

#16 Bedford – Division 1

#17 East Grand Rapids – Division 1

#18 Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard – Division 2

#19 Divine Child – Division 2

#20 Lowell – Division 1