Muskegon turns in entertaining performance with lopsided basketball victory over GR Ottawa Hills

By Ron Rop
LocalSportsJournal.com

MUSKEGON – The Muskegon Big Reds used some “showtime” basketball to dismantle Grand Rapids Ottawa Hills 64-36 in the final game of the Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame Holiday Classic.

James Martin winds up for a dunk for Muskegon. Photo/Tim Reilly

The game, part of the 21st annual event, was played at Reeths-Puffer.

While the Big Reds’ wide open, high flying act was hit among the fans who showed up for the game, Coach Keith Guy was a bit more critical of what he saw out on the floor.

“A lot of people came up and said how good we looked,” Guy said. “I’m saying to myself, ‘we really didn’t look that good.’ We have a lot of work to do. We were throwing the ball all over the place. The score says one thing, but I will watch the film and tear this thing apart and I’m going to treat it like a loss because we are going to scrutinize every little thing that happened and fix these things because it’s not going to go well for us in the end.”

In the first half, Muskegon owned a 33-19 halftime lead before the show began right after halftime when James Martin threw down a dunk just 40 seconds into the third quarter.

“I thought we were going up too soft in the first half,” Guy said. “We were just soft. So we just challenged them to be tougher to the basket and put pressure on the rim and when we started to do that, that was the result.”

In all, there were four Big Reds’ dunks in the second half and none finer than a high flying, vicious jam by Martin as he sailed over a defender with 41 seconds remaining in the third quarter.

“It’s up there,” Guy said. “I’ve seen a lot of good ones, but I’ll tell you, that ranks in the top five. That was SportsCenter worthy. He was the main one I challenged at halftime.”

Four Big Reds reached double figures in scoring with Martin, Justin Watson and Keashaun Johnson with 14 points each. M’Khi Guy added 10 and Elija Langston-Jones had eight.

Martin finished with three dunks, including the highlight reel jam and an alley-oop slam. Langston-Jones threw one down as time expired in the game.

Willie Duke led Ottawa Hills with 20 points. Craig Hureskin added eight.

“It was a great day for basketball and we don’t take this for granted,” said Guy, whose team is now 3-0.