Mar 9, 2018 4 min read

EDINBORO – As Joey Koroly backpedaled and let out a scream, after making a three midway through the third quarter to end a 10-4 run to open the second half, it signaled that the Trinity High School boys basketball team had finally arrived.

A three-hour bus ride Friday wasn’t necessarily the way to wake up third-seeded Trinity, which was slow-starting in each of its playoff games over the last three weeks.

Koroly took it upon himself to wake up the Hillers.

After he went the bench with just over 4:30 remaining in the game, Koroly reentered to score the final seven points by making several free throws and forcing a huge turnover to lead Trinity to a 45-42 victory over Erie Cathedral Prep in a PIAA Class 5A boys first-round tournament game at Edinboro University.

Not only was it the Hillers’ first state playoff win in program history, it sets up a rematch with the team that knocked them out of the WPIAL playoffs. Trinity (21-5) plays WPIAL champion Mars (22-4) Tuesday at a site and time to be determined. The Fightin’ Planets defeated Hampton 68-47 in their first-round game.

“If we’re a second-half team, we’ll take it,” said Trinity coach Tim Tessmer. The Hillers had rallied to overcome early deficits in the first two rounds of the WPIAL playoffs.

“We were really slow to start but once we got our wheels under us I thought we had a pretty good chance. They were beating us to a lot of those punches in the beginning. But our guys don’t want to be done. I have six seniors who want to keep playing.”

Nobody resembled that more than Koroly, who led all scorers with 23 points. He went 5-for-6 from the free-throw line in the final 71 seconds and forced a huge Cathedral Prep turnover with 16 seconds remaining.

“The intangibles are really important,” Koroly said. “Making the simple plays and doing the fundamentals, even if my shots aren’t falling. My teammates were finding me for open looks, and they were falling tonight. It hasn’t been that way for the first couple of playoff games. At the end of the day, we just have to focus on us. When we play our game, focused and locked in, we are tough to beat.”

District 10 champion Cathedral Prep (11-13) found that out as the Ramblers watched its 20-10 lead, built after a Joseph Mischler layup with 4:54 left in the second quarter, quickly evaporate.

Trinity’s Stephen Schultz scored four points to spark an 8-2 run to end the first half, cutting the Hillers’ deficit to 22-18. Schultz then made a three-pointer and Dylan Kern scored on a layup with 7:04 left in the third quarter to give Trinity its first lead, 23-22.

“Trinity did a great job late in the first half of getting the ball inside,” said Cathedral Prep coach Mark Majewski. “They ran their stuff and were really patient. They came out in the second half and jumped on us right away. We made a couple of bad decisions and were getting very slugging both offensively and defensively.”

Cathedral Prep still held a four-point lead after the third quarter, 36-32, getting a buzzer-beating floater from Caden Elwell.

Majewski knew the Ramblers weren’t out of the woods yet.

“We watched film on Trinity many times and knew the game wasn’t in our control at all,” he said. “(Trinity) did a heck of a job not panicking and settling down. Koroly was a floor general out there, especially down the stretch. He made key foul shots and buckets. You have to give credit where credit is due.”

The Hillers outscored Cathedral Prep 13-6 in the final quarter as Schultz finished with nine points.

Michael Lucarotti led the nine Ramblers to score with nine points.

“It’s tough,” Koroly said about playing an unfamiliar opponent.

“You don’t know who can shoot, where they can shoot, how good of defense they play or who is their hustler. Those things don’t show up in the statistics.”

After a 56-39 loss to Mars to end the Hillers’ WPIAL playoff run one game shy of the championship game, not knowing their opponent won’t be a problem.

“We have been waiting for this game ever since that clock hit zero,” Koroly said. “Ever since we got back to the locker room, that feeling we had, the thing they took away from us … a WPIAL championship … that was tough. We are ready.”