Panther Creek boys basketball ready for historic NCHSAA 4A state final appearance

Panther Creek student-athletes Tyler Thompson and Amari Odom, their teammates, and Catamounts boys’ basketball coach Shawan Robinson are living in the moment while preparing for a moment Robinson understands well.

Saturday, Robinson will lead his team in Panther Creek’s first ever N.C. 4A hoops state final. The Catamounts will meet Weddington (Matthews) — last season’s 3A state champion — at 7:30 p.m. in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Dean E. Smith Center.

Robinson (a previous Clemson hoopster) was the starting shooting guard for Leesville Road when the Pride made its inaugural state final appearance in 2001 at the Smith Center. That team was coached by Robinson’s father Darryl, now a Panther Creek assistant coach.

“The time that we get to spend together during these games is priceless,” an emotional Robinson said after the Catamounts’ 68-54 state semifinals win over Cleveland on March 5 at Green Level.

“I’ve been blessed with really good parents, really good players, and really good supporters.”

Robinson and Sean Crocker, Panther Creek’s football coach, are strength and conditioning partners each Sunday. They are collaborators, too, in optimizing meaningful gridiron and hardwood opportunities for Thompson (6-foot-6, 200 pounds) and Odom (6-4, 170 pounds), both juniors. Last Saturday, it was Robinson’s turn to benefit from how Thompson and Odom support their coaches’ prevailing sportsmanship emphases in words and deeds.

Inside the fourth quarter’s 6:30 mark, Thompson scored and drew a foul to give the Catamounts a 48-34 lead. Thompson was assessed a technical foul with 6:18 remaining for excessive celebration in close proximity to an opposing player. Odom intervened almost immediately.

“I just calmed him down and walked him away from the situation so it wouldn’t escalate,” Odom said. “We just went on from there.”

Odom’s assist in this situation was not among his seven tallied on the game statistics sheet. Odom netted 16 points and corralled eight rebounds, too.

Thompson was most appreciative in words and deeds. Having calmed down, he approached the official who assessed the technical foul.

“He was just like, ‘After the layup, you kind of looked at him in a disrespectful way,’” Thompson said. “I was like, ‘Okay, I respect that. I won’t do it again.’”

Thompson and the official shook hands and continued in competition. Thompson never questioned what Odom did or said, nor Robinson’s decision to remove him briefly from the game.

“I see these boys as my brothers. I listen to them and everything they have to say,” Thompson said. “I know it’s right because they would never tell me wrong.”

Thompson affirmed his coach, too, for teaching the importance of doing little things that make big differences. Thompson, who has averaged 12 points and seven rebounds through five state playoffs games, finished with 14 points and 10 rebounds against Cleveland. His most notable stretch, though, included him scoring not once. After the game, Thompson articulated his simple formula for still making impactful contributions.

“It’s really just me wanting to do it,” Thompson said.

Thompson returned to the game after the technical foul with 5:08 to play. Eleven seconds later, he secured a defensive rebound. At the 4:18 mark. Thompson, before falling out of bounds, saved the basketball to a teammate. The game’s next points were set up by Thompson’s pass out of a trap to teammate James Daly for a dunk.

“”When you tell him to do something, he’s going to do it,” Robinson said. “He got fired up. He kept us in it defensively. Offensively, he stayed engaged. I’m super proud of him.”

Proud, too, was Darryl Robinson, who could be seen exchanging a “low five” with his son within the semifinal’s last minute.

“For me to stand here and try to put that into words, something would be lost in that for sure,” Darryl Robinson said. “This thing has come full circle.”

For Panther Creek (23-7), the rest has been and will be history. Before this season, the school’s best state playoffs run was to the state quarterfinals in 2009 and 2014.

“We’ve been making history since the Elite Eight,” Odom said. “I’m just having fun living in the moment.”