Joe Dunn was back in the house Friday night at Mt. Pleasant. So were some of his former players.
Including Mark Katarski.
The two men went head-to-head in a boys basketball matchup of Section 4-3A teams fighting to stay in the WPIAL playoff race.
Dunn’s Charleroi Cougars, behind Xavion Thomas’ 27 points, held off Katarski’s Mt. Pleasant Vikings, 63-59, enhancing Charleroi’s grip on a playoff spot and ending Mt. Pleasant’s chances for postseason play.
“We were fortunate to get out of here with a win,” said Dunn, who spent 12 seasons during two stints at Mt. Pleasant, where he is the program’s all-time leader in coaching victories. “They had a furious comeback. We like that furious pace, but we don’t like guys getting four 3s in the fourth quarter.”
Charleroi (10-9, 4-3) nearly wasted all of a 19-point fourth-quarter lead before holding on for its sixth victory in the past eight games.
Mt. Pleasant (5-15, 1-7) trailed 50-31 on Mikey Lee’s only basket of the game for Charleroi to start the fourth. But the Vikings made it a close game, outscoring the Cougars, 28-15, over the final 8 minutes.
“Just a furious comeback by them,” Dunn said.
Mt. Pleasant’s late offensive outburst was fueled by six 3-pointers, including four by Gage Valone, who led the Vikings with 14 points. His last one with 14 seconds left pulled Mt. Pleasant within four points, but the score stood as the final.
“Our group has been like this all year,” said Katarski, who is in his first season as coach of Mt. Pleasant. “Their resilience is really, really impressive. I told them after the game that I’m really lucky to be their coach. I’ve enjoyed this season as much as any we had. They could’ve run and hide and let it turn into 30, but they fought and cut it to four, which is just impressive.”
Mt. Pleasant entered the year on a 25-game losing streak, the second-longest active streak in the WPIAL.
“This group has won five games and tonight had their eighth loss by single digits,” Katarski said. “The progress is unquestioned that our group’s been through. Hopefully, these are experiences we can learn from and build off of for the future.”
Jackson Keranko added 11 points for Charleroi. Raymond Arrigo chipped in 10 for Mt. Pleasant.
The game highlighted Mt. Pleasant’s 35-year anniversary of the team’s back-to-back section championships in 1990 and ’91 while Dunn was its coach. A handful of former players from those teams were recognized before the game.
Afterwards, Dunn called the scene “surreal.” Katarski, the former Seton Hill women’s coach, referred to it as “weird.” He’s known Dunn since he was 8, kept the scorebook for his teams before his high school days, then played for Dunn at Mt. Pleasant.
“It’s the weirdest thing ever,” Katarski said of standing opposite Dunn on the sideline. “It’s just not something that I would assumed I would have done. Coach Dunn had had a great career, retired from coaching himself. I was coaching college basketball for 23 years, and here we both are coaching high school basketball. It was really neat to just share that experience with him and share time with him. I wish we could have had a tie tonight, but it didn’t work out.”
Besides his father, Katarski referred to Dunn as “probably the most influential male that’s been in my life.
“Whether as the scorekeeper for his teams, when he was my coach in high school and as a friend and a mentor, coach Dunn means so much to me.”
It wasn’t the first time back for Dunn. He also resurfaced last season with Charleroi after agreeing to come out of retirement to coach the Cougars.
Prior to that, Dunn coached Trinity against Mt. Pleasant, where he was 145-129. At Trinity, he was 142-118.
He said he harbors some of the fondest memories of his career at Mt. Pleasant.
“It’s a surreal experience because there’s just so many great memories of this place with the great people here,” said Dunn, a former junior high principal and social studies teacher at Mt. Pleasant. “And then, Mark being a pivotal person in this whole thing. It was an incredible night.”