LONG TIME COMING

Before his team even walked out of the locker room Friday night, John Hardaway felt good about Saturday.

Cashion backed up his intuition by erasing a 24-year drought.

The second-ranked Wildcats shrugged off a loss in Friday’s area championship to Minco to hammer Calera on Saturday and earn a berth in the Class 2A state tournament.

The 61-26 victory at the Pioneer Cellular Event Center in Weatherford punched Cashion’s ticket to state for the first time since 1996.

“I’m beyond happy for the kids and for our school and community,” said Hardaway, who last coached a team to state in 2008 while at Morrison.

“It’s really cool to see because this is a group of guys who really wanted it”

Of course, the Wildcats wanted it the night before, but were knocked off, 56-51, by No. 6 Minco in the area title game.

“It was a back-and-forth game where neither team was up by more than five or six either way,” Hardaway said.

“They ended up getting the win and we came off the floor disappointed.”

But it was next half-hour that Hardaway felt reassured about this group of Wildcats, the very team that got Cashion, now 25-3, to the area tournament for the first time since 1997.

“I could tell within the next 10 to 15 minutes that they were going to be OK,” he said. “Before they even left the locker room, their spirits were high and they were ready to get back at it again.”

But they had to wait nearly a full day before taking on Calera, a team hovering around .500 that had pulled off upsets of No. 13 Caddo and No. 19 Mangum the first two days of area.

But Hardaway didn’t think it would have mattered who his team played Saturday.

“I just thought all week long that even if Friday didn’t go well for us, that these guys knew that they weren’t going to lose twice in a row,” he said.

And he was right

Despite a rough start, Cashion was able to assert its dominance before halftime.

“We did some things that were uncharacteristic,” Hardaway said. “But then some shots started falling and we really started defending them. The guys figured out they were superior and just got comfortable.”

Cashion’s lead was 18 by halftime and then 19 going into the fourth quarter.

That’s when Alex Nabavi heated up.

Or, as Hardaway put it: “He went crazy.”

Nabavi hit four consecutive 3-pointers as part of a 21-5 run by the Wildcats.

“It was already a 20-point game when he got hot,” Hardaway said. “Then the lead just ballooned.”

Nabavi ended his night with 26 points, matching Calera’s output single-handedly.

Nabavi was 6 of 9 from 3-point range and the team went 10 of 22.

That was one night after 4 of 21 from the arc.

Jacob Woody had a teamhigh 20 points in the Friday defeat, then added 12 points, four assists and five rebounds in the win.

The Wildcats also got five points and six rebounds from Jonah Jenkins while four others contributed four points.

Calera shot just 22 percent (10 of 44) in being held to its lowest point total of the season.

While the Bulldogs’ season ended, Cashion’s rolls into this weekend for the first time since several years before the current crop of Wildcats were born.

However, Hardaway said he could sense a year ago how badly his team wanted to get to this point

“When they walked out of locker room last year at Hinton (after a season-ending loss in regionals last year), you could tell they really wanted to go to state,” he said.

“I saw a lot of them at the state tournament a couple weeks later and they said they felt they were going.”

Of course there’s saying it and there’s doing it.

Hardaway said his team did what it takes to “do it.”

“We played lot of tough games over summer, they came to open gym, they got in the weight room,” he said.

“They did everything they’re supposed to do to give themselves a shot”