Pinckney girls basketball coach Tom Reason attempted to break up his team’s post game victory Tik Tok video celebration early.
Bad idea.
He poked his head inside the girl’s dressing room and emerged second later. He was splattered with water. Reason doesn’t mind getting all wet if it means another Pirates victory. The youthful Pirates usually celebrate success on Tik Tok where it sometimes gets wet and wild.
The latest celebration took place Friday night when the Pirates (4-5) finally shut down White Lake junior guard Parker Ostach (20 points on nine of 18 shooting) and rumbled to a 42-37 home victory over the Eagles (5-3). The lead singer and lead performer on the court honors went to sophomore Audrey Wardlow who filled the score board with 17 points, eight rebounds and five steals.
Afterwards, she was almost as excited about the Tik Tok video as beating White Lake.
“Check it out,” she said enthusiastically. “It’s a good one.”
Pinckney and White Lake proved to be a good one also. The Pirates teetered several times but used its suffocating defense to spark rallies. It used a 15-8 rally to tie the game at 21 at the half. Its final push came during the last three minutes of the game when it pushed White Lake’s offense to the right side of the floor and shutting down Ostach at the same time.
“We base our entire program on defense,” Reason said. “We don’t have a ton of offensive fire power. So I would say we get a third of our scoring off defense.”
Pinckney scored the last seven points of the game behind the one-two punch of senior Kailey Lambert and Wardlow along with key contributions from junior Brielle Reason (six points, three rebounds) – the coach’s daughter – and another sophomore Grace Halash (seven points and seven rebounds).
Ostach didn’t score in the first quarter but got hot during the middle stanzas to keep Pinckney at bay. Ostach is a slasher who pounds the base line for twisting layups. Once Pinckney figured that out it held the Eagles to five fourth quarter points.
Pinckney is not blessed with a lot of scorers, but it makes up for it by turning up the jets on defense and jetting down the floor for fast break finishes. This must be one of the younger teams in Livingston County. Only three seniors remain after two would be seniors and two juniors transferred during the off season.
The coach may have done a double take when news hit that he was losing so many players, but he thought to himself that this is the new world order in high school sports.
“This is the game these days,” Reason said with a chuckle. “High school sports have become the NCAA transfer portal.”