by Reid Murray ’22
February 12, 2022
Despite being over an hour from campus in a hostile road game environment, the USN Varsity Basketball team and its fans showed up in full force. With a 61-41 win over #5 Providence Christian Academy, USN has secured its spot in the Division II Class A District 3 championship.
Because PCA’s gym is the host site for all semifinals and finals in USN’s district, the Tigers had to play their opponent in a building packed with Lions fans.
“You can’t really hear,” Adam Miller ‘22 said. “You feel like you’re the underdog, really.”
However, the Tigers were able to overcome the distractions, and Miller was a big reason for his team’s success against PCA. He scored a season-high 21 points, which was supplemented by an 18-point effort from Josh Scretchen ‘22.
“My teammates trusting me to shoot every time [helped me out],” Miller said. “They trust me with the ball, and I just took a chance and shot it, and I was the hot hand today.”
While Miller was on fire from the field, USN’s defense also played a crucial role in the team’s victory. The Tigers limited PCA to just six points in the first quarter, and kept the defensive effort high through four quarters, holding their opponent to 41 points at the game’s conclusion.
“We kinda knew what we were gonna get,” Russ Petty ‘22 said. “They did some more ball screen action [than in previous games] and they had some nice back-doors, but I think our defense is good enough to where no matter what they do, we can keep up with it.”
Petty said another reason his team was playing at a high level was the support from fans. Approximately 50 USN students made the trip to Murfreesboro via the spirit bus and their personal cars to support their team.
“This team feeds off the crowd intensity and we get a lot of energy from each other, and so when everyone’s up and going, we keep our foot on the gas,” Petty said.
USN will continue its district title chase in the championship game today against #2 Webb (Bell Buckle) at PCA at 4:45. In the Tigers’ two previous games against Webb, they won 71-65 at home, and lost 74-42 on the road. Both teams finished the regular season with district records of 11-3.
“We feel very confident,” Miller said. “We know it’s gonna be more of a difficult game … so we’re just gonna have to put everything on the line in the district championship.”
The win over PCA also means that USN is guaranteed a home game in the first round of the region tournament, which will take place on Wednesday, February 16. After the first round, the regional semifinals and final will be held at Franklin Road Academy.
“It feels good [to clinch a home region tournament game],” Miller said. “A lot of teams have underestimated us, and think that our one seed is a fluke, but we’ve all been working on our own skills and we’ve been bonding as a team, and it feels good that all of our hard work before is coming into fruition now.”
