COVID hit them hard; they hit back harder
Down to six players, Upper St. Clair pulls off epic win
COVID-19 provided the plot. The Upper St. Clair basketball players — all six of them — gave the story a sur-realending.
Upper St. Clair’s team experienced a COVID-19 outbreak in the past week and played Saturday’s state quarterfinal game with only six players, and without head coach Danny Holzer and three assistants.
But after the game, Holzer talked to his team in the locker room on speaker phone and the coach was literally in tears — because Upper St. Clair won.
COVID-19 has made for some oneof-a-kind stories in sports at all levels — and this one should go down as one of the most remarkable stories in Western Pennsylvania high school sports this school year. Upper St. Clair defeated visiting Erie High, 62-57, in a PIAA Class 6A quarterfinal game. The win moves Upper St. Clair into the state semifinals for the first time in school history. Upper St. Clair (21-1) willplay Reading Tuesday.
Holzer watched the game at home on his laptop on a livestream feed, with his wife downstairs. Carol Holzer needed to pinch her husband afterward so he knew this was for real.
“I started coaching when I was 22 and I’ve been coaching 34 years,” Holzer said in a telephone interview an hour after the game. “This was by far the most surreal day of my coaching career. Nothing else is even close. To watch them perform the way they did with only six kids, I’m just overwhelmed with emotion.”
Greg Wagner, assistant athletic director at Upper St. Clair, came in the
locker room after the game and put the whole thing in perspective.
“He told us,” said senior guard Ethan Dahlem, who scored 13 points, “that we’re going to be in a bar years from now talking about this day and this game.”
There were so many unusual sidebars to this story that made the whole situation unique for USC (Unreal Six Cats). This stuff is for real:
• The guy who took over as interim coach isn’t even old enough to drink alcohol. Tanner Gensler is a 20-year-old sophomore who plays at Muskingum College and comes home on weekends to be a volunteer coach for the Panthers. But he hadn’t been to many practices and hadn’t sat on the bench for even one game before Saturday.
“This is one of the greatest days of my life,” Gensler said. “In this crazy world, I guess thisis what happens.”
• Assistant coach Brandon McClester was supposed to be the interim coach, but during a short team practice Saturday morning learned that his negative test was taken too early last week and he couldn’t coach without another test. He got another one Saturday, it was negative again and he arrived at the game early in the second quarter
•The six players for USC included three regular starters (seniors David Pantelis, Luke Gensler and Dahlem), a reserve junior (Porter Rauch) and two junior varsity players (freshman Devin Hall and sophomore Matt Gaither). They were allowed to play because they were the only players who tested negative for the virus Wednesday. Gensler is the younger brother of Tanner Gensler.
• Upper St. Clair’s players and coaches had been in quarantine since Sunday and the team played a 1-3-1 zone defense the entire game that they hadn’t played previously thisseason.
• During the game, Holzer sent a few text messages to
Alex Gensler, Tanner’s sister who was sitting behind the Upper St. Clair bench. The text messages were some strategy suggestions that Alex relayed to her brother.
“I just had to put all the trust in their players and they did their thing,” Tanner Gensler said.
Upper St. Clair was extremely loose before the game —and confident.
Holzer said, “I talked to Pantelis on the phone in the morning. He’s unbelievable. He says to me, ‘Coach, don’t
worry. We got this. We’ll see you at practice Monday.’ ”
Erie, a school that has been in existence only four years, didn’t have a powerhouse team, but still had an 18-3 record. It should be pointed out that Upper St. Clair didn’t exactly put six tomato cans on the court. Luke Gensler is a three-year starter and Pantelis and Dahlem were starters as juniors. The Panthers won a WPIAL championship aweek earlier.
Pantelis, a 6-foot senior guard, was gigantic in the
win, scoring 23 points, pulling down a handful of rebounds and showing a toughness that he and Dahlem have always displayed.
Upper St. Clair totally changed its defensive strategy to accommodate its numbers. A pressing, man-to-man team all season, Upper St. Clair went soft. The Panthers sat back in a passive 1-3-1 zone because they had serious questions about Erie’s shooting ability. Erie shot only 17% (4 of 24) from 3-point range and its offense was stagnant most of the game against Upper St. Clair’s zone.
Upper St. Clair led, 25-24, at halftime, but the Panthers went on a 15-5 run in the third quarter to open up a 40-29 lead. Rauch, who had 6 points, scored off a nice pass from Pantelis to give the Panthers a 52-38 lead. Erie came back and trimmed the deficit to 58-53 with 23.5 seconds left, but USC hung on for the win. Gensler was only 3 of 14 from the field, but 13 of 18 from the free-throw line, including 11 of 16 in the final quarter.
“Holzer is always talking about how we’re the toughest team in the WPIAL, we’ve got the most grit and we’re hardworking,” Dahlem said. “I think we proved that today.”