GREATEST DAY AT STATE
10 years later, one Championship Saturday still stands out
Steve Daniels remembers the cars parked on the railroad tracks.
Not train cars. Automobiles.
On the final day of high school basketball season back in March 2008, State Fair Arena was the center of the sports world in our state. People flocked. Traffic jammed. Parking lots overflowed — and some folks resorted to leaving their vehicles on the railroad tracks.
As the public address announcer for state basketball at The Big House, Daniels had the job of imploring fans to move those cars.
Or else.
“It’s an active track,” Daniels said, still shaking his head all these years later.
As we tipoff the final weekend of this high school basketball season, oh, that we would
be so fortunate to have a run that even approaches that glorious Saturday a decade ago. It was March 8, 2008.
It was the Greatest Day at State.
Before any of the six state championship games at The Big House even began that day, we knew it had a chance to be special. After all, the day had star power — Keiton Page and Rotnei Clarke.
The small-school sharpshooters had become legends, Page at Pawnee and Clarke at Verdigris. They scored 30 or 40 points regularly. They shot from crazy distances. They made ridiculous shots.
And with both making the state finals in their senior years — Page would play at Oklahoma State, Clarke at Arkansas — that Saturday at The Big House was a great chance to see them under the same roof one last time as prepsters.
But Page and Clarke weren’t the only draws.
Daniel Orton was a junior at Bishop McGuinness, and the big man was considered one of the best recruits in the country. He’d broken a backboard a few weeks before, so the buzz around him was humming.
Then, there was Sequoyah Tahlequah, the boarding school for Native Americans. Its basketball teams developed a huge following over the years. Fans came not only from across the state, but also from across the country.
And with both the boys and the girls making the state finals — and the girls going for a fourth consecutive title with superstar Angel Goodrich — excitement was high.
Daniels, one of the few people who was there for every minute of every game that day, knew Championship Saturday 2008 had great potential.
“But we didn’t think there was going to be 10,000 or 11,000 people, and you’d have to drive around to find a place to park hours beforehand,” he said of crowds that grew so large, several hundred people had to be turned away.
And no one could’ve anticipated what would happen once the games started.
Sequoyah Tahlequah’s girls were up first against Millwood — and the teams played what would be the best title game lots of years. Goodrich scored 22 points, but as she drove the baseline for the go-ahead basket in the waning seconds of a back-and-forth game, she was stripped.
Millwood denied history; no girls team in Oklahoma had ever won four straight basketball titles.
It was such a good story that my buddy Berry Tramel decided to write his column about it. He discovered Brittney Demery, the Millwood player who stole the ball from Goodrich, was playing while her dad was on a military deployment in Iraq. He figured he wouldn’t find a better yarn all day.
But the amazing storylines had only begun.
The next game, Page scored 54 points. Needed only 28 shots. Hit 9 of 11 from behind the arc.
Then, Orton and McGuinness dunked and blocked their way to a third consecutive title.
Then, Clarke scored 35 points and Verdigris won its first title in program history.
“Usually, people with that much hype don’t exceed the hype,” Daniels said, “but they did.”
For as good as those first four games were, the most amazing game of the day— and arguably the best finish ever in a state final — was yet to come.
The end of the PocolaWalters game still boggles the mind. Even though there’s video evidence of the Class 2A girls title game, it remains almost unbelievable.
With only seconds remaining and Pocola leading 54-52, Walters inbounded the ball and ultimately got it to Vanessa Karpe on the left wing. She shot from 20-plus feet with about 2 seconds left. Splash.
Walters was up 55-54, and players from the team’s bench spilled onto the court and mobbed Karpe in celebration.
But as the ball sailed toward the goal, a referee’s whistle sounded. A foul was called, which caused the clock to stop with 0.7 seconds left. In the excitement of the moment, Walters’ bench players didn’t realize that the foul call stopped the clock and left time on the clock — and that coming onto the court was a technical foul.
Karpe made her free throw to put Walters ahead 56-54.
Then, Pocola’s Lasea Been went to the foul line to shoot the free throws on the technical. The first was good. The second was not. Pocola groaned. Walters roared. Pocola still had one last chance, but with only 0.7 on the clock, there was only time on the inbounds for a catch and shoot. That’s what Callie Slate did, catching the ball more than 35 feet from the bucket and heaving a rainbow of a shot toward the basket. The buzzer sounded as the ball arched through the air.
The ball fell so purely through the rim that it barely moved the net. Pocola 58, Walters 56. Eight points in 0.7 seconds.
“This isn’t just another day at The Big House,” Daniels remembers thinking at one point that day. “I’m not sure what anybody pays to get in here, but it was certainly worth it.”
The last game of the day seemed an afterthought, though again it could’ve been the game of the day on any other Championship Saturday. The Star Spencer girls overcame a big halftime deficit to deny Fort Gibson, which lost in the state finals for the third consecutive year.
Daniels and many others who work the scorer’s table at The Big House during state tournaments have seen hundreds of games over the years. Most of those workers have been keeping the scorebook or running the clock for the better part of two decades — sometimes more — and along the way, they bore witness to many amazing moments.
But no single day compares to what they saw 10 years ago.
“That was one of those days where you’re sitting here going, ‘Man, are we lucky to be here,’” Daniels said. “It was just a special day.”
It was the best day ever.