The South Lake Cavaliers needed Da’Nia McClain even more than they usually do on Thursday.

The reigning MAC Blue champions visited the reigning MAC Silver champion Fitzgerald Spartans — now members of the Gold division — and were without starting point guard Christian Gibson, who was fresh off a 27 point outing against West Bloomfield.

But McClain stepped up for 27 points of her own, including going 11-for-14 from the free throw line, and the rest of the squad supplemented their star to escape from Warren with a 42-39 victory.

“She’s impossible to guard,” said South Lake head coach Wilbur Jones. “You know, anytime you’re 6-1 and can jump like that, it’s going to be difficult. And she got a nice jumpshot, you know, mid range, everything. She gives great leadership, and that’s probably why she’s going Division I.”

The Robert Morris signee scored nine points in the first quarter and 12 in the second to help the Cavaliers take a 29-26 lead into halftime — a lead they never lost.

And while McClain’s scoring slowed in the second half — she had just six total points in the last 16 minutes — so did everyone else’s; Both South Lake and Fitzgerald tallied 13 points apiece in the third and fourth quarters.

“She’s an amazing player,” said Fitzgerald head coach Juwan Shakespear. “Absolutely amazing player.”

With Gibson out, Jones made sure to challenge McClain and his other seniors — Rylee Mott and Gracie George — to help bear the weight of their primary ballhandler’s absence. They did that, with Mott being the team’s second leading scorer with eight points and George was third with four points.

“They’re my seniors, so they don’t have (any) excuses. They know what they have to do when the other leaders aren’t there, and they did it,” Jones said.

“It’s about them. They worked hard to be good leaders as seniors, and they’re doing it, and everybody else is following the other girls. And they’re coming along, so they’re getting better.”

Gibson isn’t expected to miss much more time before she returns to action for a 5-1 team that has been trending up and hopes to lock in their fourth-straight season with a record .500 or better.

Their defensive gameplan looked exactly the same as everybody else’s against Fitzgerald: slow down Kaylynn Millander.

That didn’t happen to start. The senior scored 13 of Fitzgerald’s first 15 points, including knocking down three 3-pointers in the first quarter, to give the Spartans the lead after the first quarter.

But as Millander’s production slowed, so did Fitzgerald. She was held off the board in the second quarter and scored just two in the third. She added seven more points in the fourth quarter before fouling out. She finished with 22.

Millander returned to Warren this year after averaging 22 points per game as a junior, but there’s a missing piece to that puzzle: now-departed starting guard Janiya McWilliams.

“What people don’t realize is that Kaylynn played all her high school ball with Janiya, and Janiya was kind of the Kaylynn whisperer,” Shakespear said. “Well, now Asia’s (Bowman) got to step up and be the Kaylynn whisperer, because Kaylynn goes 100 miles an hour no matter what, and that’s a good thing, and sometimes it’s a curse. But she’s going to go 100 miles an hour for you, and I’ll never complain about that.”

Millander and the rest of the Spartan seniors have had a rollercoaster career under Shakespear; the team went 1-16 as freshmen before vaulting to 23-1 as sophomores and 21-3 last season.Now 3-2 in December, Shakespear wants to make sure his group understands how to navigate what might be their first high school season that isn’t all-or-nothing.

“Right now, this is foreign,” he said. “We’ve lost two games in December. It’s foreign to them, and they’re still kids. Kids get overemotional, and that’s just things that we’ve got to work on, is playing through those emotions, and that’s what’s going to get these seniors ready for the next level.”

South Lake, on the other hand, is trending toward improving upon their 15-8 record last season; They’re 5-1 with three games to go before the calendar flips to 2025.