Apex Friendship gets first boys basketball victory in school history

Teachers and classmates alike showered members of the Apex Friendship boys basketball team with congratulations on Thursday morning.

The night before, the triumphant Patriots had defeated Carrboro 46-43 for the first win in the program’s short history. Friendship, which has no senior class, was winless (0-20) in its inaugural season with just sophomores and freshmen and had lost its first 10 games of this year.

But the Patriots were inching closer and closer this season, falling 46-44 to Wake Forest and 45-43 to N.C. School of Science and Math.

“You could probably look at it as, maybe after we came close a couple of times and didn’t get it, we got it after our back a little bit,” said first-year coach P.J. Lowman. “They’ve kind of felt like they verified themselves by playing some close games and winning some quarters against some really good teams.”

Carrboro (0-9) also entered the game winless on the year, and it showed some in the late stages of the game.

“Both teams have struggled this year, and you could tell that down the stretch – nobody really knew how to win,” Lowman said. “We’ve had a couple games that were close and whoever made the most mistakes was not going to win, and that was us. But in this one we didn’t quite make as many mistakes.”

Donolly Tyrell led Friendship (1-10) with 27 points.

This story was originally published December 15, 2016 at 11:30 AM with the headline "Apex Friendship gets first boys basketball victory in school history."