JAKE’S TAKE: Improbability makes Troy’s Friday night stunner over Clarkston great
TROY— Troy 58, Clarkston 57?
It didn’t make sense.
The matchups didn’t check.
First-year starter Chris Dorsey for Troy, All-Area senior Jordan Dasuqi for Clarkston. Five-foott-6 shooter Jordan Leonard for Troy, 5-10 shooter Nick Owens for Clarkston. 6-0 big man Danny Wunderlich for Troy, 6-8 center Matt Nicholson for Clarkston.
Just one thing: You don’t play basketball on paper.
There was a new hero tonight. Only it was Ben Horvath, not James Young, who was slower and six inches shorter and came into the last ten seconds with six points, not half a hundred.
The last three were all that mattered.
“I still can’t believe what happened,” Horvath said. “It doesn’t seem real. It just came to me and I just shot it.”
Down by two, Troy frantically scrambled for a rebound in the paint with 15 seconds left. Danny Wunderlich and his opponent from Clarkston dove for the ball and poked it to the 3- point arc, where Horvath awaited for a game-winning 3-pointer.
Up. Good. Bedlam.
“I can’t remember after that,” Wunderlich said.
Immediately, the student section emptied onto the floor. The noise erupted into a steady roar. Players exchanged hugs with students. Coaches with players. Students with other students.
At almost 9 p.m., a wild night got wilder. Thirty-two minutes of gutty, rough basketball had culminated in this, this one shot for everything.
That’s all it was in the last ten seconds. Rebounds would only tie the game. Defense was all but over. Passing was off the table.
Just catch and shoot.
It was simple for Horvath. He’s a four-year player, but didn’t play much on the freshman and JV teams. Only late last season did he start seeing action. Friday was only his fourth start. It seemed fitting that a hero came from nowhere.
All night he and the rest of the Troy team had battled against bigger and stronger players.
All night they had lunged for loose balls on the floor. All night they had organized their offense, pushing the ball for transition opportunities.
That was over. It didn’t matter that Horvath was shorter than seven of the 14 Clarkston players. Or that he hadn’t started a game until this season. Or that Troy was 1-for-11 from outside the arc until that point.
Just a ball, a basket and a gym that was empty to him.
“That situation, it was just lucky,” Horvath said.
None of it makes sense. Troy senior Tommy Richardson, more comfortable as a left tackle on the football team, came off the bench for two minutes. He drew a foul, hit a free throw and missed the second free throw. Then he grabbed his own rebound and hit another free throw.
Junior Danny Wunderlich was the Colts’ top rebounder with six boards. He is 6-2. Seven Wolves stand taller than 6-2. Even their JV team has six players 6-2 or taller.
Junior Chris Dorsey, playing in his fourth varsity game, took on Dasuqi and held him to 23 points — even though Dasuqi almost always had the ball.
Devon Alexander and Austin Perry spelled Dorsey. Richardson spelled Wunderlich. Nate Bladecki spelled Noor. They all had fresh legs in the last minute.
“I think if I tried to go with seven or eight players tonight, we would have gassed out at the end,” Troy coach Gary Fralick said. “We were able to give enough of our key players some breaks tonight, and they got a second win and were able to push hard toward the end of the game and win.”
The students had been hyping up this game for weeks. All December they had envisioned a scene like the one after the game.
Heading into the holidays, Troy was finally where it wanted to be.
“I want to feel this every single time we play a game,” Wunderlich said.
And now, basketball has the main stage again. This team is for real, and after Friday, everyone knows it. It’s time for students to start coming again, which means no more nights like Tuesday when, as Fralick said, you could shoot a cannon across the court and it wouldn’t hit anybody.
“This school’s just got to get pumped up for basketball now,” Fralick said. “It needs to be big. It should be big. When we go out (to Clarkston) on Friday, Feb. 8, we should be able to bring three or four bus loads out there.”
At the end of a long night, Fralick thought about deciding who to play out of a dozen talented players.
“We’ve got a lot of people that can make plays,” Horvath said. “It just so happened to be me tonight.”
“I’m a little confused,” Fralick said.
Troy just beat Clarkston. Big, bad, OAA Red champion Clarkston. Everyone’s a little bit confused.
But look at the scene after the buzzer Friday night. There’s nothing wrong with a little confusion.
(Jake Lourim is a senior at Troy High School and a member of the S.H.P. Media Group / www.northoaklandsports.com Student Correspondence Program. He is publisher of website www.troycoltsportsupdate.com and a member of the Troy school newspaper editorial staff. He can be reached by e-mail at j.lourim@comcast.net)
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