Entering Friday night’s contest between Elizabeth Forward and Derry, both squads knew the stakes of their matchup.
In a de facto Section 3-4A championship game, the winner would snap a conference title drought and put themselves in position for a first-round bye in the playoffs.
After trailing for the majority of three quarters and battling a raucous home crowd with a strong contingent of its own fans, Derry made the game even to force overtime and pulled away late in a 55-48 victory.
With the win, the Trojans won their first section title in 69 years.
“I told our guys that this would be the longest game of our careers,” Derry coach Tom Esposito said. “I just told them to embrace the moment and take advantage of the opportunity. We kept chipping away… and things worked out for us in the end.
“It means everything to our community, our students who came down on the bus; this is for this team. We’ve worked hard every day since Christmas when we changed our mindset: one day at a time, one game at a time.”
Derry (15-6, 10-2) won nine straight section games after opening Section 3-4A play at 1-2.
“Unfortunately, we lost to East Allegheny in our first section game, but we still had 11 left,” Esposito said. “Our guys paid attention to the little details in practice and we broke our game plans into sessions. It worked out for us.”
On the other side, for Elizabeth Forward (13-8, 9-3), the loss will be hard to stomach, but coach Nolan Larry made it clear that his group’s season is far from over.
“I told the guys in the locker room, because they’re certainly feeling it, ‘We’re a long way from being done this year,’” Larry said.
“I still expect us to get a pretty good seed (in the playoffs), and I still expect us to get a home playoff game. We might have lost this one, but we’re not going to take a break now. We have to keep working hard.”
Stanley Rajkovich led all scorers with 26 points for Derry while Daniel Spence (18) and Tyler Basic (17) did the majority of the scoring for EF.
After William Stockett-Harter opened the scoring, Matt Gatto and Spence combined for six points as Gatto split a pair of free throws and Spence made two from the stripe before hitting a transition three to get on the board early.
Rajkovich fired right back with a triple of his own, but Basic came back with a tough jumper. Jacob Peterson nailed a 3 and Rajkovich added two more points to end a slow and rugged first quarter with EF winning 11-7.
Both offenses opened things up in the second quarter as Basic connected from deep to restart play.
The Trojans then ripped off a 7-0 run to tie things up. Rajkovich started that rally with a fadeaway before Brayden Robinson made a layup and Rajkovich again added points with a banked triple that squared things up at 14-14. However, the Warriors responded with seven straight points of their own when Gavin Stalowski checked in and gave them energy.
After Spence made a layup, he immediately chipped in with a triple and then a tricky finish at the rim to push EF ahead by seven again at 21-14.
Stockett-Harter and Robinson struck next before Basic continued to work into the game with seven points before the half. Hudson Fridley nailed a 3 before halftime to make the score 31-24 at the break.
After an even third quarter that saw the Trojans trim one point from their deficit at 43-37, they still had lots of ground to make up entering the final frame.
While the fourth was very low scoring, Derry did enough to get the job done.
After Spence ignited the home crowd with a triple to enter the fourth, the Warriors didn’t manage another point before the end of regulation. Meanwhile, Derry made up the full 46-37 deficit as Robinson made a layup, Izak Lenhart nailed a 3 and Rajkovich scored four points, including a putback with 1:59 left to tie it. Both sides had chances to win it, but neither managed to do so, and it entered overtime with the section on the line.
In overtime, it was all Trojans as they had snatched momentum. Rajkovich and Robinson had the first three points of the quarter before Spence made two free throws to make it 49-48 in favor of Derry. That ended up being the final points for EF as Derry’s Logan Irvin came alive with the final six points of the contest to ice the win and clinch the section title.