"Kings Of Their Court" Sneak Preview

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CHAPTER ONE

“The Build Up”

            5:48. 4th Quarter. 56-44, in favor of the visitors in blue.

            Tim Cannon looked up at the scoreboard at Pinnacle Bank Arena in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska and knew that his Millard North Mustangs were so very close to a state championship, but there was so much more that needed to be done.

            “We were feeling really good going into that timeout, but we also knew that Bellevue West probably had one more run in them,” Cannon said. “I really felt if we just took care of the ball, hit some free throws, the game was ours.”

If that lead held true, the one thing that had eluded Cannon for 39 years as a head coach, that elusive state championship, would finally be his.

            But the basketball gods would not make it that easy on him.

*

            Millard North’s 2019-20 season, one could argue, began the year before, in the district championship game against Omaha Westside.

            With a state tournament berth on the line, Cannon’s young squad came into Westside’s gym riding a seven-game winning streak and had fought tooth and nail against the host Warriors for 31 minutes. With seconds left in the game, senior forward Brett Porter, who would later walk-on at the University of Nebraska, took a strong right-hand drive from the left wing and finished an acrobatic lay-up to put the Mustangs up 53-51 with .4 seconds left. 

            “We felt really good in the huddle that they had to go 94 feet in less than a second,” Cannon said.

            Westside called a timeout immediately after Porter’s make. After conferring, the officials reset the clock to 1.6 seconds, but the Warriors still had to go the length of the court. Westside had a plan, and they were prepared for the situation.

            “We had run (the play) earlier this year against Lincoln East and we missed the shot, and we talked about how we’ve ran this a bunch before, we’ve practiced this before, so let’s let it rip and see what happens,” Westside coach Jim Simons said after the game.

            Senior Tucker Hagan took the ball out of bounds and threw a baseball pass to Chase Thompson, who had flashed up from the back court. Two Mustangs challenged Thompson as Thompson tipped the ball to his right to senior Carl Brown. The ball bounced once, but remarkably hit Brown in perfect rhythm for a jump shot that he launched from 33 feet out. The shot hit the backboard, rolled around from the right side of the rim to the left side of the rim, hit the backboard, then rolled all the way around the rim again before hanging on the rim for a split second, then fell in.

            Game over.

            54-53 Westside. The Westside crowd rushed the floor, while the Mustang fans went from elation to anguish in the blink of an eye.

The play was, quite obviously, devastating for Cannon and his crew. An amazing sequence of events (which later ended up as the “Top Play” on ESPN’s Sportscenter) denied the Mustangs a trip to Lincoln and Pinnacle Bank Arena. No state tournament once again, the sixth year in a row with no state tournament since Cannon had arrived at Millard North.

            “That play was unbelievable, and early the next year, I had one of my coaches come up to me and say ‘Coach, you have to forget about that shot’, and I said ‘No, I will never forget about that shot.” Cannon said. “That shot acted as motivation for me, and I’m sure that it did for the players.”

            Ian McPhilllips, who was a junior on that 2019-20 team, agreed with Cannon. “That's what really pushed us that off-season. We were so close to getting to state, and I think that we could have made a run if we had gotten there. We worked hard as a team, and we hung out a lot outside of basketball. This was more than just basketball; this was a brotherhood.”

*

            Cannon’s core group of 2019-20 Mustangs were young, and they were talented. As a sophomore, Saint Thomas had developed well in 2018-19, but was at times an afterthought in the showcase of talent that the program had amassed. One newspaper article mentioned Thomas as someone who “could have a college future”. 

            “As a freshman, he was 6’2” and he’s always swinging by my classroom. We’d have some great talks, but he’d always stretch the talks out because I don’t think he wanted to go to class. The class was right across the hall, so I’d have to get him over there,” Cannon said.

            Thomas had been a talented baseball player growing up, but as time progressed, his passion changed to basketball, and he felt that was his athletic gateway to the future. After being cut from both the school and legion teams his freshman year, Thomas put baseball in the rear-view mirror and solely focused on hoops. Despite narrowing the focus, there was still a lot of work that needed to be done for him to excel on the basketball court, much of that had nothing to do with his physical abilities.

            “His sophomore year, he’s only playing JV with some Varsity minutes here and there. He had some mopiness to him, some pouting. We had a lot of conversations trying to work him through these things, but by the end of his sophomore year, all of a sudden things came around. He’s playing every game, but not as much as everyone else, because he wasn’t as good as everyone else. After his sophomore year, he told me that he wasn’t quick enough, and he really worked on his game, really worked on his explosiveness. He was really dedicated to making himself better, and it really paid off,” Cannon said.

Jasen Green, a 6’7” forward, had started every Varsity game as a freshman in 2018-19. During the summer between his freshman and sophomore year, he received a scholarship offer from the University of Nebraska and new head coach Fred Hoiberg. This was the first of many offers that Green would see as his career developed. 

“I’m getting hired before my first year, and I run into Robert Green, who is there to pick up his daughter Jayna from a girls basketball camp at Millard North,” Cannon recalled. “I looked at Robert, who is about 6’7” and I thought ‘Oh my God, please tell me that he has a boy.’ So I went up to introduce myself and I shook his hand and I told him that I remembered watching him play at Nebraska-Omaha. I asked him if he had a son, and he said ‘Yep!’ He wasn’t there with him, so I asked him if he was any good. He said, ‘my daughter is good; he’s going to be better.’ So then I asked him if he was coming to school here, and he asked me if I was going to be here when he got to Millard North? I said, "You bet!” I would remind both Robert and Jasen of that conversation at least once a year.

Max Murrell, a 6’9” senior, received multiple offers from Power Five schools the summer between his junior and senior season, eventually settling on Stanford University. 

“Max really blew up at the 2019 NCAA Summer Showcase, which was the first year that they offered that opportunity,” Cannon recalled. “Max was really the ultimate teammate. He was playing with some really talented players, and he never complained about shots or anything. He just wanted to do what was best for the team.”

Most notably, junior-to-be guard Hunter Sallis went from regional Division I recruit to one of the hottest prospects in the country. Sallis was one of the most sought-after recruits in Nebraska’s history, and his exposure was only growing after the summer between his sophomore and junior year, which included multiple stints at USA basketball training camps.

With all of this returning talent, most programs would be ecstatic, but there was a surprise awaiting Cannon and his staff the spring of 2019. Hunter’s cousin, Jadin Johnson, a talented point guard that was going to be a junior, had made the decision to transfer from Council Bluffs Abraham to Millard North.

            “His dad really did things the right way,” Cannon recalled. “Jadin had played with Hunter and Saint a lot when he was in junior high. He actually went to Morton Middle School, part of OPS (Omaha Public Schools). To be honest, he was convinced to go to Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln, but his dad said that Jadin was getting some looks from Ivy League schools. He knew that Millard North is a very good academic school, so this move was not just for basketball. He called up myself and Zim (Millard North Activities Director Chad Zimmerman) and said that he wanted to do this the right way. He said that he wanted to move into the district, so where were the zones that they could move into so that he would be eligible and there would be no questions asked.” 

            “Jadin’s impact was great. He was really welcomed in as a transfer. Some places there are players that aren’t as welcomed, but he gave Saint and Hunter a chance to play their natural positions and to be our primary ball handler so that it wouldn’t fall onto Saint and Hunter all the time,” Ian McPhillips said.

            “We just kept taking steps,” Hunter Sallis said. “We lost my freshman year, and then Westside beat us with that crazy game my sophomore year. As a team, you could just see the growth that we had every year. I had a lot of good veterans in front of me, like Brett Porter and Nick Ferini, that really showed us how to do things the right way. They built the culture the right way. We were also all homegrown guys; other than Johnson, we all started at Millard North and stayed there all four years. We didn’t recruit anybody to come over with us.”

            “Their second year, I thought this could be a great program,” Jessica Livingson, Hunter’s mother, said. “Jadin’s dad and I are cousins and really good friends, and I suggested they look at Millard North. He turned out to be the missing piece to this whole thing, so when we added Jadin, I thought we could win a state championship.”

            With this top-heavy lineup also came some depth. Noah Erickson, a 6’6” forward, was an integral part of the Mustang bench.

            “Noah was so good in the preseason that we had to make a decision that year to start either him or Saint. He was scoring a ton. We had him come in off the bench, and he never scored as much as he did in practice, but he was really good at the top of our 1-3-1. He was a great sub to bring into the game.”

Erickson's talents were evident, and despite not starting for Millard North his senior year, he ended up at Wayne State (NE), a NCAA Division II school, on a basketball scholarship.

“Just a great teammate,” Cannon said.

Along with Erickson, 6’8” junior Tyler Sandoval also helped the Mustangs out with key minutes coming off the bench.

“Tyler really was a late bloomer,” said Cannon. “He went to Buffett Middle School with Hunter and Chuck Hepburn, but he was on the “B” (2nd Team). His mom had volunteered as a coach because they were short coaches, and at the time, Tyler wasn’t ready for the “A” team.

“When he got to Millard North, we had him play on the freshman team, but he was struggling with a few things. We had some conversations with him, trying to explain to him that we thought he had a pretty bright future in basketball, and that he needed to make some changes. He really took those conversations to heart and really began to take basketball seriously. He spent a lot of time with his teammates, which really helped him out, both on and off the court. By the time he got to his sophomore year, we knew he was going to be good. He and I had a very good relationship, and I love him to death.”

With this collection of talent, Millard North was the overwhelming choice as the pre-season top team in the state. Boys Town head coach Tom Krehbiel, whose Cowboys played the Mustangs in the NSAA annual Hall of Fame Jamboree, came away highly impressed, but also with a warning.

“They are very good and very deep,” Krehbiel said. “They made 11 3’s (in the scrimmage), so if they can consistently hit shots then good luck to everyone else, because you cannot play them in man defense very long. Every position is someone skilled, big, and who can win the matchup. No one else has five dudes like that.

“But will they stay playing together? Will they concentrate on getting better at the little things that win championships and how will they handle any amount of adversity? All that said, if the bus doesn’t break down, they will win 20 (games).”

*

            The Millard North 2019-20 journey was a great one, but it wasn’t without its difficulties. A pre-Christmas loss by seventeen points to Omaha North, who finished below .500 for their season, was a quick wake-up call.

            “They were just really, really physical with us that night, and it took us out of our game. They deserved to beat us that night, and the game wasn’t really ever that close,” Cannon said. “That one, because it was so early, I thought it did us some good, because it got us refocused.”

            Losing that game was erased by winning the annual Metro Conference Holiday Tournament, defeating long-time nemesis Creighton Prep in the finals. But the Mustangs still at times lacked the night-to-night consistency that great teams have. A road game against a sub-.500 Gretna team went to overtime. If it were not for a missed free throw by Millard West and a great play by Sallis, another overtime game would have been a loss against another sub-.500 Millard West squad a couple of weeks later that frustrated the coaching staff even further. 

            “We had a lot of talent, and at times, it was hard to convince the kids at that point that we had to bring great energy and effort to some of these games because there was a belief that the talent would carry us,” Cannon stated. “I just don’t think that I could convince them that year to have that urgency against some of those teams.”

            Millard North dropped a game against Creighton Prep, who gained revenge for the Holiday Tournament loss less than three weeks later, 65-60, and another tough loss on Senior Night against rival and traditional power Omaha Central, 83-81 in overtime, was another tough pill to swallow.

            “Against Central, we had the ball in Hunter’s hands, the game was tied and he drove. I thought he got fouled, but they ripped it from him. They took it in for a lay-up, and the game was over. That was our last home game of the regular season,” Cannon said. 

            However, there were many more peaks than valleys on this journey for Cannon’s squad. They did reach the twenty wins that Krehbiel had projected for them, including three wins over a very good Papillion LaVista South team, a 68-60 vengeance win against Westside, erasing much of pain from the heartbreaker the year before and sweeping their rival Millard schools, Millard West and Millard South. It was a banner season to be sure, but another school in town, maybe Class A’s most consistent program, was also building its resume towards another great postseason run.

*

            The team that Millard North had down by twelve points with 5:48 left to go, the Bellevue West Thunderbirds, had its own rollercoaster ride coming into the 2020 final, and they too had their own motivations to make up for a disappointing end to their 2018-19 season.

            Bellevue West had a banner season in 2018-19, coming into the state tournament 25-1 and the top seed in the bracket. After cruising to an eleven point victory in the opening round against Papillion LaVista South, Doug Woodard’s Thunderbirds were completely dominated in the semi-final against another traditional Nebraska power, Omaha Central, 71-57. Bellevue West, who had defeated Central in the regular season by fifteen points in December, trailed 37-17 at halftime and were never really in the game in the second half.

            “We just couldn’t hit a shot. A lot of credit goes to Central; they played a zone and we just couldn’t make a shot,” Woodard said. “I felt like we attacked the zone fairly well, and any time it starts to snowball, instead of just relaxing, you start pressing. When we beat them in December, they didn’t have a couple of their main players, so they weren’t at full strength. Central was just really good at the end of the season.”

            A disappointing end to a great season, and per usual, the Thunderbirds were ready to reload. In Nebraska prep circles, it’s just assumed by most that Bellevue West is going to be part of the state tournament discussion year in and year out. Woodard had a strong stable of players to bring the Thunderbirds back into contention for the 2019-20 season.

            “Most of those guys had played together in AAU and they had a good camaraderie with one another,” Thunderbird assistant coach Steve Klein explained. “They were able to gel with each other, yet get Chucky Hepburn and Frankie Fidler involved, as they were playing with their own AAU teams. But probably the biggest thing was that they had a lot of different talents; we had a really good combination of talents and they fit well together.”

            “We had a large senior class and a lot of really good role player type of kids,” Woodard said. “We had a good big man in John Shanklin, who was physical and tough. We had a slicer in Louis Fidler, we had a great defender in Trey Hepburn. We had a lot of kids that were good role players.

            “Probably the most important player, the key, was Frankie Fidler, Louis’ younger brother. When he was a freshman, we thought he was going to be a nice player, but then he just shot up. We could see it at the end of his sophomore year; in fact, we should have played him more at the end of his sophomore year, but things were going so well that it was hard to find time for him. But then he took another jump in the summer between his sophomore and junior year. He was really developing as an elite scorer. He could post you up, he could put it on the floor with hesitation, he could obviously shoot it. And he’s also a really good passer.

            “I remember telling a couple of guys that rank classes and all that junk, and they really didn’t have Frankie in there. I told them that Frankie was going to be better than most of those kids that they ranked ahead of him,” recalls Woodard.

            “And then, of course, we had Chucky.”

            Chucky, as he simply became known as, was junior-to-be (and Trey’s younger brother) Chucky Hepburn. A starter since day one of his freshman year, Hepburn was perhaps the most widely recruited player in the state, with offers from Minnesota, Texas Christian, Wisconsin and, of course, local schools Creighton and Nebraska, by the time his junior summer was over.

            “You could probably call Bellevue West “Point Guard High School” like Penn State used to be “Linebacker U”. You have someone like Zach Fortune, who played at Iowa State, then you go to Josh and Jeremiah Dotzler, the CJ Johnson’s, and then you move into Antoine Young and Chucky. We’ve been very fortunate to have those types of players,” Klein said. 

            One of those point guards came from the family that is perhaps most publicly associated with the Thunderbird program. Ron and Twany Dotzler have sent multiple children through both the boys and girls basketball programs at Bellevue West, but their impact on the Omaha community runs much deeper than that. In 1988, the young couple moved into North Omaha and founded ABIDE, an organization that reaches out to the community with a pastoral mission and a social justice message. The parents of fourteen children, the Dotzler’s have been a fixture in the North Omaha community, but the love of basketball is something that also runs deep in the family.

            “Doug Woodard and I go way back,” Ron explained. “We played at the same time in college, but then after we graduated, we played in some post-college tournaments. We both had a passion for basketball, and we’ve had this connection through basketball.

“I saw a lot of talent in our oldest biological son, Josh, but I was also concerned about what I saw from other programs and how they operated. Some were really disorganized; they weren’t as committed as Doug was with his program. I went to a couple of OPS practices and it was a zoo. I thought it was maybe just a bad day, so I came back the following week, and it was a zoo again. So I asked Doug if I could come to one of his practices, and it was so good; organized, efficient. College level is what it was. So we made a decision when Josh was in about seventh grade to start playing for the Junior T-Bird program, and we’ve been connected, either through the boys or girls’ program, for about 25 years to Bellevue West.”

            Bellevue West had another outstanding regular season in 2019-20, garnering a 21-3 record going into the state tournament. But not all was simple, as all three losses, to Omaha South, Creighton Prep and Millard North, were all by double figures.

            “Any time that you have a lot of talent, especially in high school, there’s a tendency to think that you can get by on that. Well, that’s not healthy, even if it were true. We had to get the guys to buy in to do the stuff that is important to be really good,” Woodard said.

            The first collision between these two teams took place on Valentine’s Day, 2020, when the Mustangs went into one of the toughest gyms in the state and pulled out a 70-60 victory over Bellevue West.

            “The Thunderdome”, as the Bellevue West community calls their home court (named after the school's mascot, the Thunderbirds), has been one of the best home court advantages in the state since the school opened in 1977. In one of their most complete performances of the 2019-20 season, Millard North left no doubt that they were ready for the big time, and it was the two cousins that led the way for the team.

            On offense, Hunter Sallis had one of his most complete games of the season. He shot 8-13 from the field and finished a perfect 9-9 from the free throw line, ending the night with a game high 25 points. Only his seven turnovers left a sour taste in his mouth.

            On defense, Jadin Johnson did a masterful job locking up Chucky Hepburn, holding him to fifteen points total, with only two of those points coming after halftime. Hepburn actually missed his final seven shots from the field. The Thunderbirds also went 2-19 from the three-point line.

            “It wasn’t that we didn’t have decent shots; we had good shots,” Woodard said. “We had to get better at balancing the floor, and usually the worst that you shoot the ball, your floor balance is not as good. I think you can still win a game, or at least make a game really competitive, if you still are doing all of those other things. The issue was, we weren’t doing all of those other things, so you’re not going to overcome bad shooting like that.”

            “The defense was really good. Chucky didn’t get a lot of good looks and we didn’t foul him a lot. We just didn’t want him to get to a bunch of free throws,” Cannon said.

            Saint Thomas and Jasen Green both contributed 13 points apiece, with eight of Green’s points coming in the 4th quarter on easy shots as Millard North flawlessly executed its delay game. As a team, the Mustangs shot over 58% for the night. A complete team victory on the home floor of one of the teams that the Mustangs knew stood between them and their goal of a state championship.

            “They pounded the lane that night, either with post touches for the big kids or driving to the basket. They beat us off the dribble repeatedly, and we did not respond well to getting punched in the mouth. It really exposed some things for us,” Woodard said. “We’re essentially a month out from the end of the season. I don’t like using terms like ‘wake-up call’, but I think it does make it easier to show the kids that we haven’t arrived. If we don’t, the season isn’t going to end the way that we want it to.”

            “That Bellevue West game was something special,” Ian McPhillips said. “The rivalry was really starting to brew, and then you had Chucky and Hunter’s rivalry growing. People were really starting to talk about it all over town.”

            “It’s pretty ironic that we had to go to the delay game to protect the lead, but we did a really good job of it,” Cannon said. “We delayed it pretty well, made some free throws and some layups. Not many teams go into (Bellevue West) and win. We told our kids that if they wanted to win a state championship, it goes through here.”

Tim Cannon kept a list posted in his classroom of all the programs that visited Millard North’s campus from 2019-2021. Five of his players would eventually receive Division I scholarships.

*

With such high expectations for both squads, any type of setback could be viewed as catastrophe. Bellevue West responded to the disappointing Valentine’s Day matchup with Millard North with three consecutive wins to close out the regular season, then they dominated an overmatched Norfolk team in district play before punching their ticket for their fourteenth state tournament appearance under Woodard’s direction with a 68-58 win over a solid Lincoln Southeast team.

After the disappointing end to the regular season with the home loss to Central, Millard North got the opportunity to refocus and move on to the “second season” and district play. After Millard North jumped out to a 44-19 at halftime, they took care of Lincoln Southwest, 69-50, in the first round of their district. This put the Mustangs back where they were the previous year against Omaha Westside, in the district championship game. This time, they would leave nothing to chance against the Kearney Bearcats.

After outscoring the Bearcats 27-19 in the first quarter, the Mustangs really turned it on in the middle sixteen minutes, outscoring Kearney 37-19 and putting the game out of reach. The final score logged in at 85-55, but it did not indicate how overwhelmingly Millard North had dominated the game. 

            “Saint was phenomenal that night, he really shot the ball well,” Cannon said. “Coach Beranek from Kearney was calling down the sideline; he kept yelling ‘30 seconds, 30 seconds’! They wanted to hold the ball for 30 seconds each possession, but once we got the lead, they had to abandon that, and we really took control of the game.”

            This year, there would be no crazy endings, no miraculous heaves. After seven years under the leadership of Cannon, Millard North was finally headed down to Pinnacle Bank Arena and the Class A state championships. It seemed that, after district play, the only thing that could stop Millard North was themselves; they had gotten over the invisible barrier of getting to the state tournament and had buried the ghosts of what had happened a year ago in their district championship game. What could possibly end this dream season, other than basketball itself?

            Unfortunately, a virus from China, which had broken out in the open market in the city of Wuhan in late 2019, had something to say about that. In less than three months, this virus, which was later known more commonly as Coronavirus or COVID-19, had made its way to America. At the time, no one knew how much this virus was going to upend every single aspect of our world.

*

            In early January 2020, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) began to monitor an outbreak of pneumonia and respiratory illnesses in Wuhan, China. By January 10th, the CDC published information about this virus on its website. On January 13th, Thailand confirmed its first case, with Japan following two days later. On January 20th, Washington state confirmed the first state side case of COVID-19. Two days later, on January 22nd, the World Health Organization confirmed that COVID-19 can be transmitted from human to human, and the ease of which it could be spread via human contact was alarming.

The United States government began its response in earnest at this time. On January 29th, the Trump administration announced that they had established the Coronavirus Task Force, headed up by Alex Azar, the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary. Two weeks later, the nation of Italy became the world’s first hot spot. With its large, cramped cities and elderly population, the virus spread like wildfire. For the first time, the world saw just how deadly this virus could be, and, if one was able to survive the virus but became hospitalized, how fragile our public health systems truly were. New phrases entered everyone’s vocabulary over late February and early March; “social distancing” was something we were now supposed to do. Coughing and sneezing were now questioned like they hadn’t been in generations, since the Spanish flu outbreak after World War I. The world was changing daily, and sometimes hourly.

For the sport of basketball, March is the best month of the year, perhaps its most important month of the year. Most state high school unions are organizing their state tournaments, and the National Basketball Association is getting geared up for the stretch run of its regular season. But perhaps no individual event has quite made modern basketball like the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, or as most people call it, “March Madness.” Sixty-eight teams vying for the national championship, winning six (or if necessary, seven) games over a three-week period which involves billions of dollars of wagering and millions of hours of work time lost by the American public, especially the opening weekend of the tournament. COVID-19, however, was going to define a different type of madness in March 2020.

            As the Trump administration put out more measures to prevent the spread of the virus inside of the United States, including cutting off all travel to China (and later Europe) and the development of testing kits and testing sites, the virus had already made its way into the nation. The first cluster of cases took place in two retirement homes in Washington state, but the tentacles of the virus did not reach the mainstream of American society until March 11th, when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus after experiencing flu-like symptoms. Gobert became widely criticized after his positive diagnosis for his laissez-faire attitude towards the virus, which included Gobert, during a press conference two days before, playfully touching all of the reporters’ phones and recording devices that had been placed on the table in front of him. Gobert’s positive diagnosis led to the NBA season being postponed indefinitely, later finishing in the late summer in Orlando, Florida, in what became known as the NBA “bubble.”

            College basketball was not immune, either. On March 11th, 2020, the same day that the NBA season was postponed, first year Nebraska head coach Fred Hoiberg left their Big Ten tournament play-in game at halftime against Indiana in Indianapolis with flu-like symptoms. Hoiberg was diagnosed with influenza, but Hoiberg’s obvious physical struggles on the sideline became one of the first major public images of COVID-19.

            The next domino to fall occurred the next day, on March 12th, when the Big East tournament, which had decided to proceed forward with its post-season tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York with limited crowds and essential staff, literally canceled its tournament at halftime of the Creighton-St. John’s game. Later that day, the NCAA announced that they were canceling the 2020 men’s and women’s tournaments. Within hours, the civilized world began to shutter itself as the World Health Organization announced that the Coronavirus was now a global pandemic. By March 15th, New York City officials had shut down their public school system, soon to be followed by almost every other school in the country, and soon after, restaurants, bars, movie theaters, concerts and any other form of entertainment was closed down.

            Suddenly, and what seemed like overnight, everything was up in the air, and despite the government’s best efforts the virus was spreading, including into Nebraska. The Nebraska girls state tournament had been played the weekend before, but a male student from Crofton had tested positive for the virus. This student had spent time in the student section, and the fear was the virus may have spread to an undetermined number of students, players and adults. The girl’s tournament finished on Saturday, March 7th, days before the shutdowns began, but by the time the boy’s state tournament was to tip off, there had been fourteen confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, and an untold number of either undiagnosed cases or infections that were in the incubation state

.The opening tip of the 2020 Class A state championship game. Normally there would have been 10,000 spectators or more, but because of COVID-19, there was less than 500.

            “Well, I had a lot of fear, like many people, that we would never get to play. Once they called off the Creighton game at halftime, I wondered if we were going to get through our tournament,” Cannon said.

            “Obviously, you're concerned from a basketball perspective. No one likes the unknown, and there were a lot of rumors going around,” Woodard said. “We went through a range from where we thought they were going to pull the plug on this thing to where we thought everything was going to be alright. It was really up and down.

            “I remember standing there after we played our first game with my assistants, and I thought that we were done. They’re not going to call off the Big East tournament, the NCAA tournament and then let us play. We were kind of resigned to not playing.

            “I really got to give the NSAA a lot of credit. Number one, they had to really withstand a lot of pressure. And number two, I think that they did the right thing.”

            “When that call was made, and people were starting to shut things down, we were looking at ourselves like ‘what are we going to do?’,” Mike Sautter, who covers high school sports and recruiting in the state of Nebraska through Hurrdat Sports, explained. “At the end of every single end of quarter, every halftime, every end of game, we thought they were going to shut it down. There was just no one there. It’s too bad, because the place would have been sold out.”

            “Walking into that huge arena and looking around at the very few people was very unique and something I will never forget,” Tonya Sandoval, Tyler’s mother said. “However, we were so proud to get there and so happy we were still going to be able to play, even when the NBA was shut down.”

Governor Pete Ricketts announced an emergency declaration on the evening of March 13th, but by then, the tournament had begun. With social distancing measures in place, the tournament would be closed to the public at every facility. Only immediate family members, essential media and staff would be allowed inside the tournament facilities along with the teams.

            “What I heard from the governor was at this point in time, unless there is a confirmed case they can’t track that it was okay to go on in small groups and so we’re going to continue,” Nebraska Schools Activities Association director Jeff Bellar stated on March 12th.

            “The day before the game, the whole world shut down,” Saint Thomas said. “Then they released the announcement; no fans at the game.”

            “I give the NSAA a lot of credit for sticking with it. We were one of the few states that kept playing after the outbreak,” Cannon stated. “On the night before the first game of the state tournament at practice, our assistant principal, Aaron Berringer, came to practice to put together a list of who would be on the pass list for each player. Well, Aaron is a huge sports fan, and he’s in charge of making the list of four per family. So he told the kids and coaches that night that he needed the list the next day, but he found a way to make the list so that everyone could get their family members in. He fudged what he could fudge.

            “Gosh darn, it was scary. To go from those tremendously big crowds we had to that was really tough. The crowds were so big that year with Saint and Hunter and with Max going to Stanford, so it was disappointing to not have that at the state tournament selfishly.”

            “It was pretty surreal to be pretty much the only thing going on. There really wasn’t anything else going on, and I think that added to everything, the tension and intensity of the situation,” Woodard added.

            The tournament did begin on Thursday, March 12th, as planned, and the Mustangs defeated a gritty Papillion LaVista South squad 62-60 in their opener. It was the fourth meeting against the Titans, and Cannon knew how difficult it was going to be to defeat a very good team once again, especially coaching in what was essentially an empty arena.

            “You could hear a lot more, people trying to distract the players. I didn’t think we played badly, Papillon was just really good. We knew they would be a tough out. Saint made a tough shot at the end of the game, and we were just happy to move on,” Cannon said.

            “We definitely had those first game jitters. Standing out there on that court with those bright lights and the shooting background. It was intimidating, even though there was no one there. I may have thrown up a couple of air balls during warm-ups,” Ian McPhillips said with a laugh.

            The next evening, Millard North took on the defending state champions from Omaha South, who had been one of the best programs in the state for the last decade. Cannon’s side put on a clinic in the third quarter, going on a 21-2 run instigated by Sallis. The Mustangs, who had a two point lead at halftime, effectively ended the game by the end of the third quarter, keyed by a defensive adjustment at halftime.

            “At halftime, we talked about going zone because they were penetrating a lot and things weren’t going the way that we wanted. We were about 85% man to man team, we just did zones to mix things up. Right before the start of the second half, we’re out by the benches as the kids were warming up, and we had already told them we were going to the zone. We (the coaching staff) just looked at each other and I told my coaches ‘Piss on that, we’re not going zone.’ We changed it to where we were going to trap the first dribble or pass after half court, and it really worked. It really changed the game, and it made it into a twenty-point game,” Cannon said.

            For the first time in school history, the Millard North boys’ basketball team was in a state final, but it was not all roses. With about three minutes left in the semi-final, Hunter Sallis went up in the air and his left ankle rolled after he landed on the foot of an Omaha South player. Writhing on the floor in agony for a couple of minutes, Sallis made his way to the Mustang bench and elevated his ankle for the rest of the game. Insisting that he would be fine, Sallis was not going to let a sprained ankle prevent him from playing in the biggest game of his life.

            “We talked to Jasen Green’s father, who recommended a doctor that had a technique that would help with the swelling. The doctor came out and looked at the ankle, and he helped reduce the swelling enough so that he could stand on it. He could still play, but it was not going to be at the level that he would normally play at,” Hunter’s father, Trevis Sallis, said.

“I was in a lot of pain,” Hunter said. “I was doing all this rehab just to feel decent to go out there, going to all these different specialists. I was definitely hurting, but I was going to go out there and play. After it was all over, It took my ankle about two weeks to get back to normal.”

*

            Bellevue West also kept their own hot streak going into the tournament. The Thunderbirds, who were the top seed in the bracket, drew an overmatched Elkhorn squad in the opening round. Elkhorn, who is usually in Class B (the second largest classification in Nebraska), had a one-year enrollment spike that put them up into the Class A field. 

            “Elkhorn went with a lot of 1-3-1 zone, and they tried to shorten the game on both ends with the zone on defense and holding the ball and being very patient on offense. It was definitely a clash of styles,” Woodard said. “They were a big, strong team, but I don’t think that they were ready for our quickness and our aggressive defense, and that caused them a lot of problems. We forced a lot of turnovers and we were able to capitalize on those turnovers.”

            Bellevue West’s victory in the opening round set up a date against Omaha Westside, the same team that had defeated Millard North the previous season in the district championship game. This time around, Chucky Hepburn and Frankie Fidler made sure that the Thunderbird’s season would not end in the semi-final.

            Fidler would carry the Thunderbirds in the first half, with eighteen of his twenty-three points to spot Bellevue West the lead. But it was Hepburn who put together the masterpiece that sealed the deal, especially in the second half. Hepburn had twenty points in the second half, and finished the night with 28 points, six rebounds, 12 assists and, perhaps most importantly, zero turnovers. The Thunderbirds pulled away for a convincing 89-70 victory and a berth in another state championship game.

            “I remember Frankie going off, spreading the ball around, and we just shot the ball really well. It was one of our best offensive games that we’ve ever had at the state tournament since I’ve been at Bellevue West, because sometimes you get down there and the background is different and the teams are really good. We just really got it going that night. Chucky was so good that night. I remember that he would have multiple nights like that, but you wouldn’t really notice it until you saw the stats after the game. It says so much about him as a player,” Klein surmised. 

            “It was a classic game. Westside was very good and very dangerous, and we thought it was going to be a game until the last minute,” Woodard stated. “But watching Chucky control the game was so impressive. He controlled things on the defensive end and the tempo on offense. He got us good shots and we shot the ball well.

            “The thing that you get considered about is that when you play that well in the semi-final, you just know that things aren’t going to go that well in the next game. It’s just human nature in that it’s very difficult to put games like that together back-to-back. The next game has nothing to do with that game.”

            Woodard turned out to be correct. For twenty-six minutes, his Thunderbirds hung on for dear life the following night, and it tested his team more than it had been tested all season long.

*

As Cannon briefly glanced at that scoreboard, he knew how close his team was to hoisting that championship trophy.

            “Just execute,” Cannon said, “and we’ll be champions.”