Click the AUDIO buttons to hear post-game comments from Lillie Johnson and Coach Andy Cretens, and hear the radio call of Johnson's 100th career point.

GLADSTONE---When most of us get sick, all we want to do is lay in bed and sleep. It can be a struggle just to walk down the hallway to the bathroom, or to the kitchen to get water or juice.

But on Tuesday night in Gladstone, perhaps the Upper Peninsula's best high school girls basketball player put on the purple-and-white Braves basketball jersey and took to the court against the defending state champions. And what happened was one of the best moments in Gladstone High School athletics history.

Lillie Johnson scored 25 points to lead the Braves to a grind-it-out 51-47 win over the defending state champion Ishpeming Hematites. And in the process, Johnson crossed the 1,000 point mark for her Braves career, and she did it in the first game of her junior season.

“I got a little emotional because...it was a great feeling,” Johnson said. “They (her teammates) were congratulating me on how big of a thing that is, and just hearing the crowd and everything, it felt pretty cool.”

And she did it, frankly, while feeling sick as a dog, as you can hear in her post-game interview with RRN's Mike Pankow on the radio.

“Oh, it was a bit rough,” Johnson admitted. “I felt really our of shape, that's for sure.”

Gladstone led all night long, at times by double digits, but the Hematites did not give up. Janessa Eagle put her team on her back, scoring 17 of her 25 points after halftime. But the Braves were able to hang on after both of Ishpeming's rallies that closed their deficit to three points, and then four, at the end.

It was a match-up between two very likely All-UP Dream Team selections.

“It was definitely challenging,” Johnson said. “It made it even better that me and her used to be really close friends. The competition, I felt like it was an even bigger goal to do it on her. I did not make any comments. She congratulated me on the court, and that's about it.”

Gladstone Coach Andy Cretens says it was a great win.

“They're coached well, they always play hard, and they understand the game well,” Cretens said. “And they compete. It was a good test for us in the first game. We did some good things, but we've also got to work on some things. We've got to get our game-legs under us.”

And what about Johnson's milestone?

“It's pretty special,” Cretens said. “Lillie doesn't realize how much the younger girls look up to her. It creates a lot of excitement for those kids to want to do what she does. It's amazing how much impact a player like that can have on a program. People love playing with her. The girls would be okay if she took every single shot. We just need her to have a little more of a mean streak.”

Gladstone hosts Westwood Thursday night.