Grabbing The Mike

The Bluejays nest is beaming because Mike Avery is back on the sideline in Southfield.

Three years after leaving the boys basketball bench at Southfield-Lathrup, Mike Avery has been hired as the new coach at Southfield HS. This hire appears to place Avery in the driver's seat for the merger job next year following Lathrup shuttering and the two schools combining.

Avery is stepping into the former shoes of longtime Southfield coach Gary Teasley, who retired on the heels of the 2015 campaign. To put it mildly, this is a phenomenal land for BlueJays CageNation. The Big A is the picture of stability, class and surefire tactical skill with a clipboard in his hands and a whistle around his neck.

Over the past decade, Avery mentored a pair of THER-A-FLU SPECIALS aka all-state hoop kings in current NBA'er Roy (Devyn) Marble, Jr. and current Toledo point point guard Jon-Jon Williams. His presence will be a complete game-changer for 'Jays star junior floor general Amauri Hardy - he'll take his game to the next level under Avery's tutelage and that's downright scary since Hardy is already in the stratosphere in natural talent alone.

When he was a prepster himself, Avery was a starter on arguably the greatest high school squad in state history – the back-to-back Class A state-title winning 1984 and 1985 Flint Northwestern Wildcats before starring on the college level at Central Michigan.