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St. Mary’s survives scare from Clarkston in regional semifinal
WHITE LAKE » No. 1 Orchard Lake St. Mary’s narrowly avoided getting upset in the Round of 32, as the nationally-ranked Ea- glets slid by a hungry, underdog Clarkston club 38-37 in a Division 1 regional semifinal matchup held at Lakeland High School Tuesday evening.
Fouled underneath the basket, Clarkston had a chance to send the game into overtime with 0.4 seconds left. After making the first attempt on a one-and-one at the line, the second shot bounced off the back rim, sending St. Mary’s on to the regional championship game.
The Eaglets now turn their attention to Walled Lake Northern (11-4) for a regional championship affair on Thursday. Last year,
St. Mary’s was the No. 1 club in the state when the tournament was cancelled in the middle of districts because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
St. Mary’s was ahead 23-16 at the break Tuesday and opened the second half with a pair of thunderous slam dunks by senior guard Julian Roper and senior center Peter Nwoke. Clarkston hung tough and closed the third quarter on a 12-6 run, capped by junior point guard Keegan Wasilk finding freshman Brody Kosin for a lay-up at the horn that shaved the Eaglets’ lead to just
one possession at 32-29 entering the game’s final stanza.
Wolves junior shooting guard Nate Steinman hit three free throws after being fouled on a 3-point attempt at the top of the key and Clarkston suddenly had its first advantage of the night, 34-32, at the 4:35 mark. Isayah Harris’ bucket in traffic with 2:50 left gave Clarkston a 36-33 lead.
St. Mary’s saved itself at the free throw line and Roper’s two at the charity stripe with 45.8 ticks to go propelled the Eaglets back into the lead to stay. Steinman got off a contested triple in the final seconds and in the scramble for the rebound off the miss saw Clarkston draw the off-the-ball foul.
Roper ripped the nets for a team-high 16 points. The bouncy 6-3 Mr. Basketball candidate is signed to play his college ball
at Northwestern. Nwoke notched a double-double of 12 points and 14 rebounds Tuesday.
“You can never let up in the state tournament, anything can happen any night,” Roper said. “This is my last chance to make it all count, for all of us to make the mark we know we can make. I wasn’t going to let this game be my last at St. Mary’s. We had no intention of going home, bowing out or anything like that tonight and we played like it in the last few minutes.”
St. Mary’s head coach Todd Covert knew Clarkston was ready to give them a good old fashioned dog fight.
“You’re talking about Clarkston basketball, the gold standard around here, a program we just have the utmost respect for and I don’t care if we were favored tonight or not, those Clarkston kids are taught to be fearless and they know how to get after it,” he said. “We stayed positive and weathered the storm. We took some hard punches and it didn’t floor us. We buckled down and kept swinging.”
Clarkston wraps up its season at 14-4. The Wolves lost All-American Fletcher Loyer last summer when his family moved to Indiana and didn’t extend the program’s OAA Red title streak to a 15th consecutive campaign.
On Tuesday, Clarkston was without starting junior forward Mike DePillo, out with a hyperextension. DePillo is a Division I college football recruit at quarterback.
Steinman went for a game-high 17 points in the loss Tuesday.
“We played a lot of close games this year, faced more than our share of adversity, just like everyone else, and that helped us, we’re a mentally tough group,” Clarkston head coach Tim Wasilk said. “We put ourselves in position to win this game, get a victory maybe nobody saw coming, however, ultimately we didn’t capitalize and it just wasn’t to be.”