DaytonDailyNews.com

COLUMBUS — It was time for Dunbar to show what it was made of.

Five minutes remained in Saturday's Division II boys basketball state championship. Five minutes left in a frantic, collision-of-styles game the Wolverines once had led by 13 and now trailed by six.

Upper Sandusky's Jon Diebler, the most prolific scorer in Ohio high school history, suddenly couldn't miss, and the entire crowd — except for a small Dayton contingent — was pulling for him and his team.

Diebler's nose, broken a week earlier, kept seeping blood, but it was Dunbar that was woozy. After a pair of Diebler 3-pointers and a dunk, Wolverines junior Josh Benson admitted, "We were all a little shaky right then."

Dunbar head coach Pete Pullen — clad like his assistants in a royal-blue pinstripe suit — called a timeout and then told his team to show its true colors.

"He didn't draw up a play," said assistant coach Albert Powell. "He just talked about heart."

As Pullen later explained: "I told them, 'Don't let the last few minutes choke you. Fatigue makes cowards out of all of us sometimes. We've got to play through all that.'

"I told them to look at Jon over there with that broken nose — he had the (protective) mask on one minute, off one minute — and he was enduring. We had to, too."

Dunbar did just that — especially 6-foot-9 senior Aaron Pogue, who'd spent much of the game on the bench in foul trouble.

Over the next 87 seconds, he grabbed three rebounds, took a Diebler charge and scored six straight points to tie the game, 78-78. More importantly, Pogue kept huddling his teammates on the court.

"He told us it wasn't over, that we were going to do it," Benson said. "And he was right."

Dunbar won, 87-85 — the first back-to-back state champs from Dayton since Roth in 1981-82. Pogue finished with 10 points and 11 rebounds. Diebler, headed to Ohio State next year, made 14-of-36 shots for 48 points.

After the game, several Wolverines were in tears. The emotional release came not only from their final-seconds gut check, but for what the win meant to their often-doubted team, their school and their West Dayton neighborhoods.

"This is a tremendous unifier for us," said Athletic Director Frances Winborn. Powell agreed: "This validates all of us. We had one alumnus come talk to the team — he must have been 90 — and he told how (he and his teammates) hadn't been allowed in the tournament back then because of segregation. He said a lot of people now were living through these kids."

For Pogue and fellow senior Norris Cole II, it was about showing they could carry a team after Daequan Cook's departure this season to Final Four-bound OSU.

"Nobody believed in us," Pogue said. " 'No Daequan, no ring,' they said, but we showed what we were about."

And after the game, no one did that better than Pullen. As he left his postgame press conference, he saw Upper Sandusky coach Keith Diebler, Jon's dad.

Keith's father had died Wednesday from cancer-related pneumonia and will be buried Monday.

Over the years, Keith always had given his dad a piece of the victory net. Pullen quietly handed him a piece of the net he'd just cut down. He wanted Keith to have it so he could place it in the casket, a move that left the Rams coach tearful.

Saturday, start to finish, the Dunbar Wolverines showed who they were and what they were about.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2156

or tarchdeacon@DaytonDailyNews.com

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