Gio Roberto's six first-quarter points helped the Falcons get off to a strong start in Monday's regional semifinal.
The Falcons' Kyle Dantzer had his work cut out for him against a strong, athletic front line for the Maroons.
Rick Dodridge had back-to-back 3-pointers in the third quarter and one more in the fourth that briefly gave the Falcons a seven-point lead.
Ogemaw's Michael Noffsinger drives through the lane for a bucket late in Monday's game.
Brent Baker
The Falcon's Kevin O'Neil tries to get through the Menominee defense.

PETOSKEY - Mar. 3, 2008 - Menominee may not play an archaic brand of basketball the way its football team does with its legendary Single Wing. The hardwood version of the Maroons, however, showed the same kind of discipline and athleticism that has marked many of the same players' football careers and served them well as they came from behind to oust Ogemaw Heights from the Class B Region 16 tournament on Monday, 63-55.

The Falcons, who led for all but a few seconds from the midway point of the first quarter until the last two minutes of the game, had a 46-39 lead early in the fourth quarter after Rick Dodridge hit his fourth 3-point shot of the game.

The Falcons, though, had little left in the tank. After fending off Menominee's man-to-man defense for most of the game, fatigue took its toll as the Maroons clamped down with their half-court trap, forcing eight turnovers and holding the Falcons without a field goal for more than six minutes in the fourth quarter.

"They were very quick," said Ogemaw coach Jon VanOosten. "More than anything, we were fatigued at the end. We didn't handle the pressure as well as we should have."

Menominee's Tom Janson, whose shot had betrayed him for most of the game, found his range once and for all. His 3-pointer with 4:15 left cut the Falcons' lead to 47-44 and got the Maroons off and running.

David Mellon's turnaround jumper in the lane gave Menominee its first lead since midway through the first quarter at 50-49. Pete VanOosten twice hit a pair of free throws to regain one-point leads for the Falcons, but Janson's long 2-pointer with 1:48 put the Maroons up 54-53.

Ahead, as it turned out, for good.

"We tried our 1-2-2 zone because we were so tired," Jon VanOosten said. "It worked for awhile because (Janson) kept missing.

"Unfortunately that didn't last."

From there the Falcons came up empty on seven straight possessions -- turning the ball over on four of them -- and Janson, Brett Beland and Mellon hit eight straight free throws to build an insurmountable lead.

Not until a VanOosten layup with 14 seconds left did the Falcons score their second and field goal of the fourth quarter.

Janson finished with a game-high 24 points, including 15 in the fourth quarter and 13 in the game's final four minutes.

But a lot of the credit for the Falcon fatigue that made his late explosion possible belonged to erstwhile all-state linebacker Matt Eisenzopf, whose defensive effort on Pete VanOosten was the best he'd encountered in awhile.

Gone were the open looks at the basket and double-pump 3-footers that VanOosten enjoyed during his huge district tournament performance. He still scored a team-high 22 points, but drew contact on nearly every shot and every cut through the lane.

Eisenzopf fouled out with three minutes left, but by then the Maroons had turned up the heat all over the court.

Dodridge took advantage of getting the kinds of shots VanOosten had been seeing and finished with 19 points. His back-to-back 3-pointers in the third quarter gave the Falcons a six-point lead after Menominee briefly tied the score. Dodridge and Gio Roberto (six points in the first quarter) kept the pressure on the Menominee defense in the first half as VanOosten battled for 14 points in the first two quarters.

Ogemaw led by as many as eight in the first half before settling for a 32-26 lead at the break.

"It's been fun," Jon VanOosten said. "The kids accomplished a lot, winning the conference and district titles.

"The rest is gravy, but it would have been nice to keep going for awhile. We led for a long time tonight."

The Falcons were coming off their first district tournament title since 1997.

Mellon added 18 points for the Maroons, while Beland scored 13.

Menominee (20-3) moves on to Wednesday's regional title game, where the Maroons will face Ludington (13-10). The Orioles edged regional host Petoskey 59-57 with a last-second jumper after blowing a seven-point lead in the final minute of play.