Noah’s Arc

SPORTS

SUSAN ADAMS PHOTOGRAPHY

Here’s an image that strikes fear into Bloomfield Hills’ opponents. Noah Adamczyk fires up a 3-point shot Feb. 25 vs. West Bloomfield.

Noah’s Arc

Bloomfield Hills High School basketball star is making life miserable for Black Hawks’ opponents.

STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Noah Adamczyk wasn’t about to let his team lose its biggest game of the season.

The Bloomfield Hills High School boys basketball star scored 17 of his 28 points — including 12 in a row for the Black Hawks in one stretch — and made a critical play on defense in the fourth quarter to lead Bloomfield Hills to a come-from-behind 52-50 victory over Lake Orion on March 1.

Bloomfield Hills trailed Lake Orion by 12 points with about four minutes to go in the game and won it on two free throws in the final seconds after Adamczyk created a turnover by poking the ball away from a Lake Orion player at half-court.

The win vaulted the Black Hawks (15-4, 5-2) into a firstplace tie with Lake Orion in the Oakland Activities Association White Division with each team having one more league game to play.

“That’s why you play the game, for moments like that in crunch time,” Adamczyk said about his fourth-quarter heroics.

“And that’s why I love basketball. There’s no other game like it. It’s so back and forth. It’s fun. I know saying basketball is fun is a generic thing to say, but it’s true.

“Basketball is all about putting the ball in the hoop, and there are so many ways to do that. As for playing defense, well, it’s either you want to or you don’t.”

Adamczyk is a 6-foot junior who is one of the state’s top point guards.

The three-year starter and first team All-OAA White selection as a sophomore came into the March 1 game against Lake Orion averaging 21 points, four assists, four steals and three rebounds a game.

Those numbers demonstrate that it’s not all about him when the Black Hawks hit the court.

“Noah is a great team guy. Very unselfish. His teammates voted him one of our three captains this season. The other two captains are seniors,” said Bloomfield Hills coach Phil Kurajian.

“Noah is so easy to coach. It’s a blessing for me to coach him.”

It isn’t a blessing to coach against him. Just ask Birmingham Groves coach Benny White.

Here’s what White said about Adamczyk in a Homelife.com story after Adamczyk scored 35 points against Groves on Jan. 27 in a 62-46 Bloomfield Hills victory:

“The game plan was to make his catches hard ... We didn’t do that,” White said. “We allowed him to catch it where he wanted to and get some rhythm ... You’ve got to pay attention to him. When you do that, it frees up other people.”

Kurajian said it was an easy decision to insert Adamczyk into Bloomfield Hills’ starting lineup two years ago when he was a freshman.

“Noah earned his spot in our lineup right away,” Kurajian said. “I could see then that he was unbelievably