Lincoln basketball etches name in school history

WARREN — If there’s one thing Warren Lincoln basketball players know about head coach Wydell Henry, it’s that defense is the glue to the basketball program.

Henry holds his team to the standard of keeping opposing teams below 50 each game, and he has instilled this mindset in his guys since Day 1.

Their defensive prowess was a major reason Lincoln was playing for Michigan High School Athletic Association Division 2 state championship against top-ranked Grand Rapids Christian on March 16 at the Breslin Center in East Lansing.

“That’s just been our mentality the whole state run — defense,” Henry said. “Defense wins championships. Defense and rebounding. For me, it was more so, ‘Let’s defend.’ We knew we could score 60 to 65 points a game because we have that type of team, so we just figured that if we keep everybody under 50, we’ll be fine. It started in districts. When two teams didn’t get 50, it just became our identity in practice.”

The Abes matched up against Grand Rapids Christian earlier in the season on Jan. 20 with the first round favoring Henry and company, 49-47.

Lincoln may have barely edged Grand Rapids Christian in their first meeting, but Henry said it sparked a defensive adjustment Lincoln planned to execute for the state title game.

“When we played them the first time, we played man,” Henry said. “I knew we could check them, but I knew it was tough. I just watched film on their two games in the quarterfinals game and semifinals game right after us, and I looked at the box score and said, ‘Wait a minute, they’re athletic and they are big, but they don’t have anyone that shoots the ball well.’ We hadn’t played zone and I know it was something they hadn’t seen us play. All 27 games, we didn’t play zone once this year. I thought it might catch them by surprise. I told my coaching staff, ‘For one game, let’s do it.’”

Like they’ve done all season, the Blackwell twins, juniors Markus and Moses, led the Abes on the offensive end.

Markus had a team-high 24 points while Moses added 12 of his own as the Blackwell twins each hit four three-pointers a piece and the twins shot just under 55% combined from the floor as Lincoln beat Grand Rapids Christian 53-39.

Grand Rapids Christian pulled within one as the score stood 34-33 late in the third quarter, but Markus Blackwell would take over with 10 points and Moses would add a three-pointer himself to help Lincoln pull away in the fourth to a 47-39 lead with three minutes left in the fourth.

“When the game was going on and there were two minutes left, I looked at my brother (Markus) and said, ‘Man, we this close. We just got to close out the game,’” Moses Blackwell said. “It really just hit me around the 1:50 mark that we were finally state champions. With all the work we put in, everything we did, and all the adversity we faced, we finally conquered our goal.”

Lincoln has strived for this moment for years with this group, labeling last year as “Breslin or bust” and this year as “state championship or bust,” and the manifesting finally paid off for Henry and his guys.

Lincoln players have thought about the moment of the final buzzer at the state finals going off for years, and senior TJ Minor said the feeling was indescribable.

“It really didn’t feel real,” Minor said. “There’s not a lot of kids that get to do this. It just felt amazing. It didn’t feel real at all.”

With Markus and Moses, there’s no better feeling than achieving something of the magnitude of a state title than doing it with your twin.

But like the Blackwell twins’ chemistry, the feeling of a brotherhood runs throughout the whole team.

“We’re all like brothers, like actual brothers,” junior Oshay Johnson said. “I think of all my teammates like brothers.”

Lincoln will return a slew of returning starters from its state championship squad and focus on being the hunted instead of hunting.

There’s always one team that lays the foundation and sets a standard for future teams to come, and the 2023-2024 Lincoln squad could be that team.

“That’s just starting a new legacy and starting something good,” Moses Blackwell said. “The next 10 years we should have about seven more.”