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IM takes on Maple City Glen Lake

Iron Mountain's Marcus Johnson (14) shoots over a Westwood defender during a Class C Region 24 semifinal on Monday, March 12, 2018, in Marquette, Mich. (Adam Niemi/Iron Mountain Daily News)

It was a short moment when Bucky Johnson leaned back in his chair in the relaxed pose of an overworked man on vacation. Hands clasped behind his head, legs stretched and feet crossed. He eyed the trophies: a Mid-Peninsula Conference championship, district championship and regional championship.

When he reached up to show off what he said was the team’s most prized trophy yet, it wasn’t any of those.

He picked up the first-place trophy from last summer’s Carney Varsity Boys Basketball Camp.

“There’s four trophies up there and I always pull that one out first, because this was from Carney. This doesn’t seem like much, but we talked to the kids about where this is all started,” Iron Mountain head coach Bucky Johnson said. “They took first place in Division 1 down at the Carney camp. I don’t know how many teams were there. There was a bunch. That trophy was there. Then they won that one, and that one and that one. There’s only one more you can win and that’s the big one. That’s their goal. I think all those experiences just help tremendously.”

The big one being a state championship. It would be Iron Mountain’s second boys’ title and the first since 1928. A state championship this year would give Iron Mountain 26 wins in a single season, the most since 25 in 1926.

For all the success the young Mountaineers have enjoyed, with consecutive district championships and a regional title and runner-up finish, they haven’t been tested like they will be today.

Iron Mountain (23-1) faces an octane lineup in Maple City Glen Lake (22-2) in a Class C state quarterfinal at 6 p.m. EDT in Petoskey.

The Lakers feature a standout cast of big, athletic scorers. Three of their starters are at least 6-foot-4, including Xander Okerlund, Cade Peterson and Reece Hazelton. They each have scored at least 20 points in a game this postseason. But Johnson said he likes how his team matches up.

“We kind of match up as far as height. They might be a little taller. I think there’s going to be some good matchups. We have to execute our gameplan. We have to play really good defensively. We have to rebound the basketball,” Johnson said. “We have to try to impose the style of play that we like to play. We have to be able to make a mid-game adjustment. We’re capable of doing different things defensively and offensively. They have a good shooter in No. 3 (Xander Okerlund). Their post player No. 23 (Cade Peterson) is a good player. They start three. I don’t know them by name. They start three seniors, a junior and a sophomore.”

For all the Lakers’ talent, the Mountaineers boast experienced youth. Three of Iron Mountain’s starters — sophomore Marcus Johnson and juniors Jaden Vicenzi and Charlie Gerhard — will be starting in their 49th varsity basketball game. And that’s after they played a litany of AAU and summer camp games last season. Coach Johnson said his son played upwards of 65 games between AAU and summer camp last summer, playing everywhere from Chicago to Grand Rapids to Carney and Marquette. The other starters also played around the Midwest. In other words, despite being mostly underclassmen, Iron Mountain’s starters essentially are as, if not, more experienced than many seniors.

“It’s the experience in AAU of playing against the competition and seeing different styles of players and different styles of plays and just being around basketball and the moves they make. That helps,” Johnson said. “If people don’t believe that playing AAU basketball or travel basketball helps kids who have a passion for the game to get better, that’s not my philosophy. I think you have to do it. They don’t seem fazed to be playing against people.”

That’s what the last Iron Mountain regional championship team had: seniors.

“Well, the 94 team was older. They started four seniors and one junior. They started (Bryan) Shorman at the point, Jeff Angeli at the two, Gabe Leonard at the three. They started Donnie Bunnin down at the four and Dave Copley at the five,” Coach Johnson said, adding that Shorman, Leonard and Angeli went on to play Div. I football. “There was a T-shirt, a yellow T-shirt, it said Pressure, pride and power, I think it said. They got in your face defensively. They were able to impose tremendous ball pressure. They were a really athletic team. I would say that the team that I have right now, pure basketball-wise, we’re more skilled, but they were a little bit more athletic, a little bigger, stronger and a little faster. Maybe not height, but they were pretty long and they were a nice team.”

Pressure. Pride. Power.

That sounds like this year’s Mountaineers, a dynamic cast of defenders and offensive weaponry.

“The Calumet radio guy said ‘I see you’re scoring 65, 67 points a game — do you rely on your offense to win games?’ He said that to me and I was like ‘Uhh, well, we can play some defense,'” Johnson said. “We’ve been trying to force our will on people and we know that Westwood wanted to play a halfcourt game and so did Calumet. We wanted to get after them and we were successful doing that. That’s why it’s nice to be able to have difference dimensions to your game unless you’re just so good you don’t have to worry about that.”

Johnson said he acquired five or six game tapes of the Lakers. By Friday afternoon, he had spotted patterns.

“With their length they remind me of Ishpeming but they don’t really play like Ishpeming as far as their style,” Johnson said. “They run the flex. They run some three-out and two-in. They run some side ball screens. They press a little bit. They’ll 2-2-1 press you. They also play a little 2-3 zone.

“Offensively, they run the flex and they’re going to try to take advantage of their personnel. They want to get the ball to No. 3, their shooter and point guard who will push it in transition. They just do what they do as far as side ball screens, running a five-man motion with the flex. They’re a little bit more diverse with their flex cuts, because if you cheat the flex and cut on the bottom, they’ll step back and throw a skip pass. That’s kind of what we’ve seen so far. I haven’t been through all five or six films yet. They’re kind of hard to compare to teams that we’ve played against up here. I haven’t seen a lot of set plays from them.”

Johnson said it’s been special to this point experiencing the season and success with his son Marcus and his friends.

“It’s not just how special it is with Marcus, because I’ve been around these kids for most of their lives, especially Charlie Gerhard. Charlie and Marcus came up together through the ranks. It’s just special in that regard,” Johnson said. “They’ve played baseball, Charlie, Foster and Marcus played on teams that went downstate. Just all of them, Tony Feira, travel basketball. I could go on about each one of these kids.

“Owen and Marcus are just really good chums. They hang out a lot. We talk about our team being a basketball family. We are a family and then we have myself, Rick, my father-in-law, my son Marcus, my daughter Katelynn who’s the (girls basketball) head coach. My son Kyle is going to Northern and wants to be a teacher and a coach. It’s really special — extremely special.”

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