Young scores 49 as Troy beat Clarkston for first time in 13 years
BY JAKE LOURIM
STUDENT CORRESPONDENT
j.lourim@comcast.net
TROY — Two longtime head coaches had to think before they said they’d never seen two individual performances as good as the two they coached Tuesday night.
Troy junior James Young poured on 49 points and Clarkston’s Nick Tatu stroked 47 in Troy’s 79-74, back-and-forth victory.
It was Troy’s first in almost a decade against the Wolves.
“(My teammates) were strong with the ball, never lost the ball,” Young added. “We played as a team more than we ever had.”
In Young and Tatu’s tennis match, it was Young who won out because he took the ball to the basket repeatedly. Even against the Wolves’ solid, disciplined defense, Young was too strong for it.
“He just made it look easy, didn’t he?” Fralick said. “We gave him the ball up top, we had him coming off screens on the baseline, we had him get the ball inside; everywhere we got him the ball, he scored.
“I just think he’s become so much more of a complete offensive player over the last five or six games.”
As for Tatu, the Clarkston sharpshooter nearly matched Young. He hit 12 3-pointers and didn’t miss many, either.
He was in a zone, making it difficult for even the aggressive Troy guards to stop him.
“I didn’t think either team played poor defense; I thought the defense was adequate, I just thought the offense played great,” Fralick said.
As the game went on, Clarkston’s defense only stiffened. The Wolves closed out on the shooters and played help defense when Young drove through the lane.
So Young needed some help to get this win.
Though Young scored 62 percent of his team’s points, Zak Noor, Joe Leonard, Danny Wunderlich, and Jeff Holmes tacked on a basket here and there.
“It was all unselfish, and there was a bucket by somebody else here and there,” Fralick said, “that they had to at least respect.”
Every time in the second half it looked like Troy was going to pull away, Tatu had an
Answer — often into tight coverage.
Young reached his 40-point goal, something he’s wanted all season, with a pair of free throws that put Troy up seven with 3:18 left. Tatu quickly followed it with a 3-pointer and a free throw that gave him 37.
Young hit two more free throws with 2:17 left that fouled out Clarkston point guard Mitch Baenzinger, but then Tatu came back in just 15 seconds with his second four-point play.
Young’s last two baskets from the charity stripe made him 12-for-16, put the game away, and ended the best game of his career.
“What I liked about him was that he always had control of himself going to the basket,” Clarkston coach Dan Fife said, adding that his team just wanted to make Young earn it, and “he earned
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