OTSEGO, MI – The term “March Madness” was coined by Illinois high school basketball official Henry V. Porter in 1939, and there’s a reason it has remained in the hoops lexicon for more than 80 years.

Anything can happen in a single elimination bracket, and an upset of epic proportions was brewing Wednesday at Otsego, where 2-18 Paw Paw jumped out to a 13-5 lead over 19-1 Parchment in their Division 2 district semifinal matchup.

But Paw Paw’s first quarter success proved unsustainable against the eighth-ranked Panthers, who outscored the Red Wolves 40-19 in the second half en route to a 68-43 win.

PHOTOS: See our gallery from the Parchment vs. Paw Paw game

Parchment’s Aaron Jasiak opened the game with a 3-pointer, but Paw Paw answered with a 13-2 run, which brought the Red Wolves’ bench and cheering section to its feet.

That start was as good as first-year coach Paskell Miller could have hoped for, and he said he was proud of his players for bringing that type of energy to a game few thought they could win.

“You go in, and you talk to them, and you say, ‘Hey, look, everybody’s expecting you to lose. You guys have one shot to go out here and shock the world. Everything that we do, comes down to this moment right now. Your season 0-0, and anything can happen at this point, so let’s just go out there, and let’s shock the world and do whatever we can,’” Miller said of his pregame message.

“My message to them was about fear. ‘You can face everything and run, or you can face everything and rise. Today, it’s our time to rise, and so let’s go out there and put it all on the court.’

“They responded pretty well. They started playing pretty hard. I think they came out with good energy, and they played tough. We were hitting shots, and I was very proud of them.”

Opting against an early timeout to settle his players, Parchment head coach David Jones watched his team closed the first quarter on a 7-0 run to cut its deficit to 13-12, and before the start of the second, he reminded them of what was at stake.

“I didn’t say a whole lot (between quarters), to be honest with you, other than, ‘We’ve got to do what we do, and there’s no tomorrow. If you lose, you’re out,’” Jones said. “We talked about if we got a good shot, shoot it. Just because we didn’t make them in the first doesn’t mean we’re not going to make them in the second, but we went in with, I think, one offensive rebound in that first half, and I told them, ‘We’ve got to hit the O-glass if we’re not making them.’”

The Panthers carried their late-first-quarter momentum into the second and led by as many as six before halftime, but Ashton Toliver his a tough fadeaway jumper to make it a 28-24 game heading into the break.

Paw Paw stayed within single digits from much of the third quarter, but a Kofi Barima dunk on a beautiful fastbreak pass from Tony Williams extended Parchment’s advantage to 48-34 heading into the fourth.

“Even at halftime, everybody still felt pretty good coming into that third quarter,” Miller said. “If we just get a couple of shots to fall down, it’s a completely different ballgame, and then, of course, No. 5 Tony (Williams) takes over. That’s why he’s a senior leader. He’s a heck of a player, and it showed. He dropped some pretty big shots toward the end of the third quarter there and in the fourth, but I’m super proud of my guys. They came out, they responded, and they played with everything, so I was very, very happy with that.”

Williams finished with a game-high 21 points, including 13 in the second half, while Barima added 12, and freshman Jalen Kampen 11. Jasiak rounded out Parchment’s double digit scorers with 10, and junior forward Blake Smith scored eight.

Junior Ashton Toliver led Paw Paw with 17 points, but the sharpshooter managed just five after halftime, as Parchment geared their defense around denying him the ball.

“I thought Aaron (Jasiak) did a really nice job on Toliver in the second half,” Jones said. “We just went full-deny on him and made him work a little bit more, and Blake Smith off the bench played well. He has practiced well for the last two months, but nobody’s seen him because it’s hard for him to get on the floor when Kofi’s ahead of him, but he was a really big asset today.”

Paw Paw junior guard Joseph Miller added eight points for the Red Wolves, and junior forward Carter Plangger chipped in seven.

The Red Wolves wrap up their season at 2-19, but the team showed progress down the stretch, including in a Feb. 18 contest against Otsego, in which they led by four midway through the fourth quarter.

“They really have stepped up and improved,” Miller said of his team. “We’re a young team, so I think it was the first 10 games in the season, we were really trying to figure out how to play at the varsity level. You can tell them until they’re blue in the face, ‘Varsity is stronger, faster, quicker,’ and they go, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ But then when they get out there and start to experience it, then they kind of go, ‘Oh, man, he was right,’ and they finally started getting the feel for the game, and they started kind of believing in themselves and kind of trusting each other.

“Watching those guys progress and get better each week, it was really truly a blessing to see, and I was very, very proud to watch them do that.”

Paw Paw is set to return every starter, except 6-foot-8 senior Dennis Strey, and ending their 2021-22 season with a hard-fought loss against a team like Parchment should provide some confidence and momentum heading into the spring and summer.

“We do have a lot of production coming back next year, so that’ll be great to have that senior leadership to teach the younger guys coming in from the JV, as well,” Miller said. “That’ll give us a good stepping stone to move into next year, so just being able to play in that toughness and be in some of these ballgames toward the end, I think, boosted their morale a ton.

“I can see the confidence in those guys, and I can see them ready to work, and I can see the determination and the disappointment on their faces. That in itself makes me feel really, really proud, and I’m looking forward to next year.”

Meanwhile Parchment (20-1) advances to Friday’s district championship game against tournament host Otsego (17-5), and though the Panthers didn’t play their best game on Wednesday, they are a young team that starts a freshman in Kampen and a sophomore in Darius Baker, and getting the first tournament game out of the way should remove any butterflies from the equation moving forward.

“Obviously, the bull’s eye is on our back because we’re the one that’s ranked in the state, but we had to get one underneath our belt because we start a freshman and a sophomore, but that’s high school basketball,” Jones said.

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