KIRKWOOD • Kevin Walsh couldn’t have been more clear.
“We haven’t won anything, yet,” the Vianney basketball coach said.
And Walsh is right. However, these Golden Griffins have accomplished things never before done on the hardwood at Vianney.
They rattled off the longest winning streak to open a season (18 games). They won the Jerry Boeckman Invitational for only the third time in school history. And, after Friday night’s 69-60 victory over rival De Smet, they finished the season undefeated at home for the first time.
As of Friday, Vianney is 22-1 overall, 6-0 in Metro Catholic Conference play and the No. 2 team in the STLhighschoolsports.com large-schools rankings.
But Walsh is right, they haven’t won anything -- at least not yet.
The Golden Griffins did clinch a share of the MCC title with Friday’s win. If they can win one of their two final regular season games next week at St. Louis University High and CBC they will win their first MCC championship outright.
“We don’t want to share,” point guard Richard Dorhauer said. “We want the whole thing.”
Dorhauer has wanted it in the worst way since last year’s district final. He tore his ACL in the Golden Griffins' win over Oakville and had to sit and watch as De Smet ran roughshod over his teammates in the sectional. After rehabilitating his knee all spring and summer, he got back to basketball-related activities in the fall -- as he sat on the bench of the Vianney soccer team. An avid futboler, Dorhauer gave up his senior year on the pitch so he could be as healthy as possible for hoops.
Everything was going according to plan until he suffered a wicked ankle injury at Chaminade three weeks ago. Friday, three weeks to the day after he limped off the floor at Chaminade, Dorhauer took the court in front of a packed house for Senior Night and showed why this Vianney team is better than its predecessors.
When Dorhauer is healthy, the Vianney lineup falls into place. They have great guards in Dorhauer and Tony Cochran, who’s the program’s all-time leading scorer. They have a versatile small forward in Brad Woodson. They have some undersized muscle at the power forward spot in Lelis Djona. They have a presence in the paint with 6-foot-10 George Suggs, who can step out and knock down a jumper or take it to the basket against any big man. Off the bench they bring in some size in Sean O’Brien (6-9), shooting in Joe Whitman and hustle in Dominic Mueller.
When one of those pieces is missing, life gets a little trickier. When Dorhauer was out that forced Cochran to play the point guard spot and shuffled the rest of the lineup. That doesn’t mean Vianney can’t be successful without those pieces, it just means the players have to do more than they would if everyone was healthy.
Some of those roles will be shifted going forward. Whitman was so ill he had to skip his Senior Night. Djona walked off the court after the game on crutches on his way to a local hospital to have an ankle injury examined. This was after he’d suffered a bloody nose and taken another shot to the face in the first half. Their availability going forward is unknown.
However, the beauty of the Golden Griffins is they haven’t relied on one player at any point this season. The sum of Vianney’s parts is greater than their individual abilities. Every piece of this machine fits together so perfectly it’s as if it were constructed with blue prints.
Walsh is right, the Golden Griffins haven’t won anything yet. But if they can get healthy, it’s hard to see it staying that way.
