Esky boys back in quarters after 61 years
Eskymo boys join girls in state quarterfinals after another victory over Ludington
Trending
TRAVERSE CITY -- Tracy Hudson wasn't even alive when Escanaba last won any basketball regional title.
Now Hudson and Escanaba's 6-foot-7 duo of Colin and Carter Hudson has led EHS into their first state quarterfinal since 1960.
Escanaba survived yet another game-ending, buzzer-beating 3-pointer to beat Ludington 41-38 at Thursday's Division 2 regional at Traverse City Central High School. Both Escanaba's boys and girls advanced to the elite eight for the first time in school history after its girls beat Ludington Wednesday.
"Right now, our school's on cloud nine," said Tracy Hudson, the coach of Escanaba.
Escanaba led the entire length of the fourth quarter in the back and forth brawl of tall northern Michigan foes. After a free throw make by Escanaba senior Erik Victorson, the Orioles gave the ball to freshman David Shillinger for a shot to tie the game on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer attempt.
However, defending a shot like that wasn't anything new to Escanaba. Boyne City's Jack Near missed a game-winning triple against EHS at the buzzer Tuesday, and Escanaba advanced to Thursday's game along with it.
But Shillinger also was comfortable making a shot like that to force overtime -- and he proved he could do it last Saturday with the game tied at 35 and eight seconds to go to give Ludington a district final win over Cadillac.
"I was hoping he would pull it out again, but the shot didn't fall," Ludington sophomore Levi Laman said. "I definitely trusted him with that shot."
Ludington got the rebound, but a pass out of desperation back to Shillinger sailed wide and out of bounds. From there, Tracy Hudson could only hold his team back from a premature celebration as Escanaba inbounded the ball with 0.05 seconds left on the clock. The game was essentially over.
The players from Escanaba leapt off the bench and rallied around the regional trophy at midcourt. It was history 61 years in the making.
"It's been a while, and I've coached against Thad (Shank) a couple of times," Tracy Hudson said. "We felt like we had a shot. The district was very tough to get out of. We felt like we had a shot in the regional. It was a goal of ours, to get to this championship game, and we basically won two nail biters."
Hudson said it was a bit more comfortable of a trip over the bridge to Traverse City from the last time it played Mid-February.
Because of an officiating conflict, Escanaba left town at 4 a.m. to face the Trojans of Traverse City Central. With a 6 p.m. tip off Thursday with Ludington, it left EHS at a more comfortable 11 a.m. -- the time its game against TCC started.
"I think it gave us a lot of confidence. 'Hey. We played in that gym. We've been successful against a really good team. We can do it,'" Hudson said. "And Ludington probably felt the same way."
And another long trip is on the horizon. Escanaba (17-2) moves onto the state quarterfinals at Corunna to meet Bridgeport (16-2) Tuesday at 7 p.m.
"This is what we really wanted," Tracy Hudson said. "So I think that we're gonna play a lot more relaxed (the rest of the playoffs)."
Three U.P. boys schools made the Sweet 16 in Divisions 1-3. Marquette fell to Grand Blanc 85-58, but Iron Mountain beat then-undefeated Oscoda 63-52 in Sault Ste. Marie Thursday as well.
Victorson said between Escanaba's rise to the Elite Eight and Iron Mountain's return since a state final appearance in 2019 says that U.P. basketball teams are nothing to look past.
"We're legit. We're no joke," Victorson said. "We'll compete with the best. We're going to come out here, and we're going to play our hardest. Don't look over us. Don't disrespect us. Especially going into this game, and playing against these teams, we know they have no respect for us. So we just got to come out and prove to them who we are."
Shillinger led the Orioles and the game with 22 points. Peyton LaCombe, a junior, added 10 for Ludington. Escanaba's leading scorer was Brandon Frazer with 10 points. Connor Smale and Victorson each scored nine.
Both teams shot well when they had the chance to. Ludington was 15 for 35 from the field for 42.9 percent, whereas Escanaba finished shooting 14-30 for 46.6 percent.
Ludington finishes its season 13-6.
"It was a game where it was really hard to score in basketball," Ludington coach Thad Shank said. "Escanaba is long and athletic and strong at every position, and they made us struggle on the offensive end of the floor."
Shank said all the credit goes to Escanaba, and that if he was told earlier Thursday the Orioles would hold a team to 41 points, he probably would have thought they would win a regional title.
He said Ludington had seen teams with size, but none that use their height like Escanaba did with the Hudson brothers.
"You don't take for granted when you're in a regional final," Shank said. "We've got a lot of young kids coming so we're excited about the future of Ludington basketball, but at the same time, you don't want to take for granted being here because it's not an easy thing to get to this point. Very few schools do.
"We knew there was only eight or nine days left no matter how you slice it, we're just a little bit sad that it finished tonight."