Anyone who has watched an NCAA tournament upset unfold, whether on TV or in person, has felt that gradual build toward a crescendo as the underdog’s hopes become more and more realistic.
That same buzz was palpable inside the Greenwood gym on Saturday night as local Cinderella Franklin laid claim to its first boys basketball sectional title since 2006 with a 54-45 victory over defending champion Center Grove.
The Grizzly Cubs, who have won five straight since a 6-14 start, advance to face Floyd Central in a Class 4A regional semifinal at Seymour.
First-year Franklin coach Adrian Moss — who was a junior on the school’s last sectional championship team — is enjoying the ride as much as he did as a player, if not more.
“I think it feels better, man,” he said. “Just to see that look on their face and know how hard they grind, and know how people didn’t trust us and all this stuff — ‘they’ve got the hype,’ and then we fell off. To bounce back like that is truly unbelievable. I’m from Franklin, I went to Franklin High School. This is what I came here for.”
An underdog fresh off an unexpected semifinal win over Whiteland on Friday, the Grizzly Cubs again took a while to find their groove. Center Grove (11-13) asserted itself early in the paint, where it had a clear strength advantage, and it used an 8-0 second-quarter run to build an 11-6 lead as a low-scoring first half wound down.
Undeterred, Franklin scored the final nine points of the half, taking a 12-11 lead on a Wyatt Nickleson 3-pointer with 1:04 remaining and then sending that “hey, these guys can actually pull this off” buzz to another level when Nickleson banked in another 3 from the wing just before the horn.
Not only did that shot make a victory feel more plausible to the Grizzly Cub fans, but it also gave the players a significant lift.
“I most definitely fed off of that,” senior center Tristan Coleman said. “That was a big shot, especially when the game was getting tight. … That gave us a lot of momentum.”
Marcus Ankney, scoreless as he sat out much of the first half with two fouls, came out aggressively in the third quarter and brought Center Grove back, tying the score at 18-18 with a 3-pointer at the 5:55 mark of the period. But the Grizzly Cubs in general — and sophomore Micah Davis in particular — had an answer for every big Ankney bucket. Davis had 13 of his game-high 23 points in the third, capping a personal 6-0 run with an and-one to give Franklin a 31-22 cushion going into the final eight minutes.
“We talked about that moment in time … where it’s time for the big dogs to take over, and Micah’s a big dog,” Moss said.
Davis got plenty of help in the fourth quarter as Franklin answered every Trojan challenge. After a pair of Ankney free throws cut the margin to 38-33 with 3:55 left, Coleman came up with a big bucket down low. When Ankney scored again to make it 44-40 with 2:05 on the clock, senior Sam Auger drained a 3 at the other end just 10 seconds later to seize the momentum right back.
Center Grove didn’t get any closer than six after that.
“We struggled to make shots tonight,” Trojans coach Zach Hahn said. “I thought a few of their players really stepped up, like Auger and Nickleson, in big moments by making 3s.”
Nickleson finished with 12 points for the Grizzly Cubs, all on 3-pointers. Auger and Coleman contributed eight points apiece.
Joey Schmitz and Jordan Vaughns had six points each for Center Grove, which struggled to get much going on the offensive end apart from Ankney, who scored all of his 22 points in the third and fourth quarters.
“I just knew in my head that I had to score and I had to get to the rim and create open spaces for my shooters,” Ankney said of his second-half outburst. “Just that extra drive to get to the rim.”
In the end, that drive wasn’t quite enough to get the Trojans over the top. Despite the disappointing end to the year, though, Hahn had nothing but good things to say about his squad.
“I am proud of this group for the way they fought through adversity and stayed together throughout an emotional season with a lot of close losses,” he said. “I loved coaching this team, and as difficult as it was at times, I’d do it all over again.”
Moss and the Grizzly Cubs, meanwhile, get to do it all over again this coming weekend in Seymour.
Suddenly, a team that came into the season with high expectations and entered the postseason with hardly any is living up to its considerable promise.
“We really had one job — well, two,” Coleman said after Saturday’s win. “To come out here and play hard, especially for the town of Franklin, then come out here and execute the plan that coach Moss gave us.”
It took that plan months to come together, but nobody in Franklin has any regrets now.
