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Unity Christian holds off River Rouge to win the division two state championship

Posted at 9:17 PM, Mar 16, 2019
and last updated 2019-03-16 23:46:53-04

EAST LANSING, Mich -- Unity Christian's amazing school year continued Saturday as the Crusaders boys basketball team beat River Rouge 58-55 to claim the division two state championship.

The title is the school's third in a boys team sport in the 2018-2019 school year after it won in boys soccer and football in the fall.

"When we started football, it was like, let's get a winning record" senior point guard Noah Wiswary said.  "Then we started basketball and it was like, let's win districts again or regionals, and I'm like alright let's do this thing."

"I know in the football one we knew we had to come out and play hard right away" senior T.J. VanKoevering said.  "That is what we did tonight too, we came out and we played hard right away and that is what we did for both of them so I think that is a big key to it."

In Saturday's championship game the Unity Christian built a 13-point third quarter lead and were able to hold off a furious rally from the Panthers.

"We went right to them."  head coach Scott Soodsma said. "We talked about wanting to go toe-to-toe with them right away and I was really excited the way we pushed the ball up the floor."

Wiswary matched his semifinal output with 17 points,   VanKoevering added 13 points and 5 rebounds, Ryan Takens contributed 10 points and Zac Velthouse scored 8 points and grabbed 8 rebounds.