Oran makes another dramatic run to final four

Oran High School has no fall sports for boys, which leaves plenty of time for athletes to fill.

Some prepare for the upcoming winter basketball season, while others continue to work on their baseball skills with the spring season in mind.

"I guess we just hang out and just wait for it. That's all you can do," Oran senior center Alex Heuring said. "We try to stay active with sports and open gyms and I guess spend time together as a team."

Surprisingly to some, the Eagles are not spending their fall months concocting suspenseful plots to games or trick shots and plays for the upcoming year.

At least that would explain the dramatic occurrences that have landed the Eagles in their third final four in the past two years.

The Eagles' drama was capped Saturday when junior Seth Ressel buried an outside shot with 2.3 seconds left in a Class 2 quarterfinal basketball game against Winona that broke a 61-61 deadlock and set up a semifinal game with Salisbury today in Columbia, Mo.

Even Oran baseball coach Mitch Wood, who has seen his share of dramatic moments in the past two final four seasons on the diamond from pretty much the same group of players, was relegated to being just another nail-biting fan in the Civic Center in Farmington, Mo.

"I was probably more nervous the other night ... I don't remember being that nervous in baseball the last few years," said Wood, who will attempt to lead the group to a third straight final four in baseball once this wild ride ends. "Basketball is just a lot different sport. You have a lot of people right there on top of you. It's a lot more emotional and lot more electrifying than baseball when you come to that part."

The Winona game marked Oran's third harrowing escape since the start of district play, and has become a common theme in the school's multiple trips to Columbia over the past three school years.

"Our fans, I think they stress themselves a little too much," Heuring said. "I mean, they are great fans, and they'll tell you the same thing, but we don't mean to put them under stress. It just happens like that."

The nifty escapes on the court in this playoff run have followed a couple of memorable Houdini acts on the baseball diamond the past two years.

"Nothing has come easy for this group," Oran basketball coach Joe Shoemaker said. "It would have been easy to pack it in and say it's done, we've had a good run or whatever, but they've had that refuse-to-lose attitude where they've kept battling to the final buzzer."

It first happened in the district semifinals, where the Eagles had to rally from a six-point halftime deficit to bump off Chaffee.

Oran later found itself in an even bigger 11-point hole in the sectional round against Elsberry, but junior guard Seth Ressel lessened the fourth-quarter chore when he banked in a three-quarter court shot at the third-quarter buzzer. It was typical of antics in recent journeys to the final four in baseball.

"That set the tone for the fourth quarter, and we rallied back," Heuring said.

Heuring failed to mention the two overtime periods that were needed to seal the deal.

A game later, Ressel's game-winning shot against Winona sent the Eagles to their first final four in basketball since 1969.

Salisbury has crushed opponents all the way to the final four, but the intensity of Oran's wins have been met with equal exuberance.

"All the way up there I guess you're all calm, but after you win, on the way back, everyone is just hyped up," Heuring said. "There's never a dull moment. Everybody is just excited, talking and dancing, and whatever you can do on the bus without the bus driver yelling at you."

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"It's not something that just happened this year," Wood said about the Eagles eventful road in basketball. "It's been a battle the last few years."

And with basically the same cast at the core.

"You definitely need to get a few breaks," senior guard Kody Moore said. "I like to say our hard work and talent have gotten us here, but we definitely had some breaks, and you've got to get them. You've got have that ball bounce your way. You've got to get that call."

Moore is among eight players on the Eagles roster who also played on last year's baseball team that reached its second consecutive final four, and he knows a friendly bounce when he sees one.

Such a bounce occurred in last year's 4-1 quarterfinal win against Naylor. Moore was pitching with the bases loaded in the sixth inning with his team clinging to a 2-1 lead when a squeeze bunt was placed down the third baseline. Moore fielded the ball and hurriedly threw to Heurig, who was the Eagles' catcher. The toss hit the Naylor runner in the helmet, but the carom landed in the glove of Heuring for the force. Oran escaped the jam unscathed and advanced to the final four.

It was much like the season before, when Heuring delivered the baseball version of Ressel's winning shot, which also came in the quarterfinals.

Heuring's version was a seventh-inning grand slam against Naylor. Heuring, a sophomore at the time, turned a 13-10 deficit into a 14-13 victory with his first high school home run.

"We've definitely had our great moments," Heuring said. "We've had our ups and our downs."

The downs have come in the state semifinals, where the Eagles are 0-2 the past two years. Oran committed five errors in both games -- each a one-run loss.

"It seems like we run out of luck," Heuring said. "We lost both times we've been up there, but you can't give up. You've just got to shake that off.

"Like this year [in basketball], we're not looking to lose. We're not favored to win necessarily, but we're not going to take that like we're gonna lose. You just have to go up there and play your game, because anything can happen on this stage."

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The Eagles responded to both semifinal baseball losses by winning the next day's third-place game.

"Whenever [you have] a tough loss, like up at state, you help pick your friends up and help them and talk to them, and altogether it makes you closer and closer, every big win and every big loss," Moore said.

It's all part of the resilient nature that has characterized this group, which has learned to negotiate the mountains and valleys.

"It just brings us all closer together," Ressel said about the seemingly endless run of big games over the baseball and basketball seasons. "We're all real close friends, and I think that's another big reason we're winning and going as far as we can, because we all really care about each other and we look out for each other."

The group despises losing, which doesn't happen much.

Since the 2010-11 school year, Oran's baseball teams have gone 44-12, while the basketball teams have a combined mark of 65-23.

Individually, many of the Eagles have had heroic moments on the court and diamond, but they also have had forgettable ones.

"Honestly we're as close as brothers, 'cause we've got each other's backs 100 percent of the way," Heuring said. "I mean, we've been through it all together as a team. We win as a team, we lose as a team. We're just all here for each other."

While Moore, Heuring or Ressel normally lead the Eagles in scoring, junior Chance Tenkhoff and sophomores Hunter Schlosser and Jacob Priggel each have scored a team high in points this season.

"You just never know, I mean Seth, Kody, Chance, me, we all could just go up there and have a career day. You just never know who it's going to be," Heuring said.

Oran has gone to 11 final fours in baseball, and the recent back-to-back final four exploits aren't lost on Shoemaker.

"I think it definitely helps," Shoemaker said. "They have confidence in their ability and what to do. We have a great baseball coach, and he makes them act right, behave right and play the right way, and that definitely carries over from one sport to the next."

Shoemaker, in his fifth season as coach of the Eagles, has brought increased success to a basketball team that had last been a district champion in 1999 when it won its first of three straight titles in 2011.

"A lot of people look at Oran and say, 'Man, they're a really good baseball school,' but when you look at our basketball record for the past couple of years -- our third district title in a row and second in a row appearance in the quarterfinals, and now we made it to state, we're doing everything baseball's done," Moore said.

And they have a chance to do something that has eluded the baseball team -- win a state title, which would be the biggest twist in the script.

"State is one of the best things," Heuring said. "I've been there -- it's a blast. You want to get there every year. For us to go in basketball and not go in baseball, that'd be kind of weird to be honest with you, because that's what we do. We go in baseball all the time. It definitely makes you want to work harder for baseball, too."