Muskegon Big Reds look ahead to taking on East Lansing in quarterfinals on Tuesday

By Tom Westerholm
LocalSportsJournal.com

MUSKEGON – Anthony Sydnor III remembers very well the day the Michigan state basketball tournament – and shortly afterward, the rest of the world – shut down in 2020. 

Sydnor was a freshman, just 15 years old, when Muskegon coach Keith Guy called his players together for a meeting and told them practice was canceled. The players had no way of knowing that Guy would call a second meeting shortly afterward. They couldn’t have known that the COVID-19 pandemic would stretch years into the future, greatly affecting their summers and even their sophomore seasons. 

Instead, players left without cleaning out their lockers, anticipating a return to action in the near future – that the canceled practice was an odd-but-momentary blip in a season that felt destined for a title. 

“[The 2020 team] was going to win a state championship,” Sydnor said on Saturday. 

Later that day, players were called back to the school’s Legacy Room. There, Guy informed his team that the rest of the season was shut down. There would be no state tournament and no state champion. For the team’s nine seniors, who made up the core of their rotation, their high school careers were over. 

“My heart was heavy,” Guy said. “Number one, I was coaching my son [Cameron Martinez]. He had waited his whole life to do that. He didn’t get a prom, he didn’t get the typical graduation. It was a lot of things that he missed, that he didn’t get a chance to do, and that group didn’t get a chance to do. 

“So I remember it like it was yesterday. I was heartbroken because these guys didn’t get the opportunities that other seniors get.”

 

Sydnor was one of three freshmen who were brought up to the varsity team as part of their development, along with Jordan Briggs and David Day III. They were in the Legacy Room that day, and they saw how deeply the seniors felt the loss of their final season.

“Those guys worked so hard over their four years, and especially that year, they put a lot of work in,” Briggs said. “We witnessed it. They had a great squad. They really had a chance to win it. … 

“You couldn’t do anything about it. It’s not like they lost. They were winning.”

The next calendar year didn’t get much easier for Muskegon’s talented-but-inexperienced trio. Summer basketball was shut down, and the Big Reds couldn’t participate in camps. When they returned to the floor, they had to wear masks, and no spectators were allowed in the gym. They couldn’t get their offseason training in. Their sophomore season was delayed, and when it finally began, they played a 20-game schedule with three games per week leaving very little time for practice or film or the weight room.

As a result, a young Big Reds struggled on the floor (at least by Muskegon’s lofty standards). They finished the season with seven losses and, for the first time during Guy’s tenure, lost at the district level. 

The sophomores, who were thrown into the fire of a varsity schedule, heard plenty of chatter about the team’s perceived failures on social media. 

“People were saying they weren’t that good, Muskegon was not what they used to be, that it was a failed season,” Guy said. “… We didn’t have a chance to train these guys. It was unfair to them for people to have the expectations that they had on these kids when they were just babies without, I would say, right of passage – without the opportunity to learn on the job.”

Guy believed that with a proper offseason, the roster had a chance to be a championship caliber team. Sure enough, they learned quickly. Hungry to prove themselves, the Big Reds went 20-3 last season and reclaimed their spot at the top of the district before falling to Northview. With their core still in place and plenty of talented players around them – such as junior big man Terrence Davis, junior sharpshooter Justin Watson, junior forward Stanley Cunningham and a number of impressive underclassmen – the Big Reds knew they had a chance. 

The 2020 team knows it too. They stay in touch with the current squad via group chat, and their message this season has been consistent.

“They keep telling us, ‘Just keep going. You guys have the ability to really win it and do something that we didn’t have a chance to,’” Briggs said. “That’s really big for us. We want to win it not just for us but for those guys too. Those are our brothers. We have our brothers’ backs.”

The Big Reds put together an impressive regular season, full of tournament-quality opponents and even a couple of back-to-backs against some of the state’s top teams to simulate what Friday and Saturday could be like if they keep winning. They knocked off Union and Reeths-Puffer in the district tournament. They handled East Kentwood and Hudsonville in the regionals. Now, with a balanced team full of senior stars and future prospects, Muskegon is headed to the state quarterfinals to take on East Lansing. A victory over the Trojans would send them to the state semifinals on Friday.

Guy is proud of how his team came together after the chaos of their first two years with the program.

“They handled it like champs, man,” Guy said. “They took their medicine, it didn’t taste good going down, but it made them better. Made them more determined, made them more focused. … They collected themselves, and you see what you see today.”

On Saturday, Muskegon got together for a lengthy practice – a chance, as multiple players put it, to work on themselves before they focus on East Lansing. Guy walked the team through various sets and worked on their press break. Junior guard M’Khi Guy and Briggs engaged in a good-natured shoving match and battled each other in the scrimmage (“I feel like I’m not gonna see a better [defender] than that,” Briggs said after practice). A few players called up from JV watched and participated here and there. 

The Big Reds are taking the moment seriously. They know these opportunities don’t come along often, and they’ve seen firsthand how suddenly a high-school career can end. For Briggs, Day and Sydnor – as well as Cunningham and Watson – Saturday’s gathering was one of their last high-school practices.

“It’s a bittersweet moment, but at the same time, it’s kind of sad,” Day said. “My senior year, it came super fast. And the season went by pretty fast too – once I looked up it was already March. 

“So I just cherish every moment, every practice I can, make a lot of memories with my guys, because you’re never going to get this time back.”

But the Big Reds also know what they have achieved. Guy gathered his players together as practice wrapped up and reminded them that they have reached the final week of the season. They are, as he put it, “maxing out their high school careers.”

“We’ve worked day and night, year round,” Day said. “We put a lot of time and work into this. So for us to come out on top, it would mean a lot to everyone around us.”

After all, this year’s team isn’t just playing for themselves. 

“We’re doing it for [the 2020 class] mostly,” Sydnor said. “We’re trying to get a ring just for them. I know some of the guys – if we win, they’re getting a ring too, just because they got it taken away from them.”