That's what the Logan High School boys' basketball team did on Saturday night in the preseason Fast Lane Classic at Sheldon Clark High School in Inez, Ky.
The Wildcats won one and lost one.
Logan lost 36-20 to Scott County (Ky.) in the first half of the scrimmage then came back to defeat Kentucky's No. 1-ranked preseason team 41-40 in the second half.
If the halves would have been added up the Wildcats would have lost 76-61 but under the tournament rules the halftime score was cleared.
That was good news for the Wildcat faithful.
Logan won the second half in dramatic fashion as 5-foot-10 senior guard Brett Sorrell drilled a 23-foot, game-winning 3-pointer with one second left on the clock.
Sorrell, who poured in 24 points on the night and hit six 3-pointers, got redemption from a turnover with 24 seconds left and the score tied at 38.
Scott County capitalized on the Wildcat mistake by scoring a bucket to make it 40-38 but Sorrell had the last laugh with the big trey from downtown Inez.
Despite the sluggish first half it was a good first test for the Wildcats, which are back in Triple-A this season and are hoping to make it to their sixth straight state tournament.
Logan was able to challenge Scott County, a big, athletic and physical team that it had played this past summer at the Georgetown (Ky.) College Basketball Camp.
The showing by the Wildcats looks even better when you realize Scott County has been practicing for the upcoming season since Oct. 15. Logan, and the rest of the high school teams in the state of West Virginia, have only been on the floor for two weeks.
The Wildcats also didn't have the services of 6-3 senior starting point guard Brantz O'Briant, who is out with an injury.
"They played to win both halves and we did, too," Logan coach Mark Hatcher said. "We just didn't play very well in the first half. A lot of that had to do with the fact that they are a very good team. There's no question about that. It took us awhile to catch up with their speed on the floor. Most teams in Kentucky play on an 84-foot floor. We play on a 90-foot floor. I think that was a big difference as well as playing without Brantz. That was Bryce Dalton's first start at the varsity level and the same for Jordan Canada. We got tired at times but I'm really proud of our guys. Some guys came off the bench and played a few minutes here and there and did pretty good."
Logan fell behind 14-5 to the Cardinals after one quarter. The Wildcats led 3-0 early after a 3-pointer by 6-2 sophomore Paul Williamson, who led Logan with 29 points on the night, including five makes from 3-point land.
"We had chances in the first half but we just missed shots," Hatcher said. "We were 4-of-18 from the 3-point line in the first half but we made 50 percent of our threes in the second half. We had a lot of open looks in the first half. We're a better shooting team than that."
Williamson and Sorrell were able to shoot the lights out in the second half. The Wildcats led by as many as four points.
"The way that we are doing our offense now and the way the kids are penetrating into the paint we've done a much better job over the summer and into the fall of hitting the open guy," Hatcher said. "Last year, maybe we got a little bit selfish at times but this year we're working on that so we can hit the extra pass. I thought that you saw that especially in the second half."
Jonathan Bevins, a 6-7 senior center, added seven points for LHS. Jordan Canada had two.
Hatcher said his team were able to hold their own against a very talented team.
"That team has four or five guys who are going big time Division I and we don't have anybody right now who is going Division I," he said. "We've got some guys getting some looks from Division II and Division III maybe. But I'm really proud of our guys."
As Logan began to give Scott County a game in the second half the mostly neutral Sheldon Clark crowd began to pull for the Wildcats. The host Sheldon Clark team played 15th Region foe Phelps (Ky.) in the previous game and many of the local roundball junkies stayed around to watch Logan play.
"The crowd was pulling for us and were cheering for us at the end," Hatcher said. "We've played in this preseason event here for a long time. We did it back in the late 1980s. We came here in 2006 and brought a JV group and played a team from Virginia. In 2005 we came over here and played real well. But the only thing is that we're about four or five weeks behind the teams from Kentucky."
Hatcher said Saturday night's game will help the Wildcats as they prepare for the season opener on Dec. 16 at Class A county rival Man.
"You aren't going to see better talent than what we saw tonight and that goes for the whole schedule - even when we go down South (to the Chick-fil-A Classic, Dec. 20-23 at Columbia, S.C.)," he said. "I believe Scott County could play with anybody in the country - teams like the Mountain State Academy's and the Oak Hill Academy's. For us to just be on the floor and just to hang with them and to make them work says a lot about our team. Our defense really played well in the second half and they weren't so bad in the first half. I'm pretty proud of our guys the way that we played. We've got an extremely tough schedule and sometimes when we play teams like this we could get blown out. Tonight we got beat by 15 points but there's a lot of positives to take out of this."
Logan's schedule gets no easier. Who is on the slate next? Beckley Woodrow Wilson. The Wildcats close out the preseason with a game on Dec. 13 at Beckley, the defending Class AAA state champions. Then it's off to Man for the regular season opener.
"We wanted to make sure that we scrimmaged two really good teams before we played Man," Hatcher said.
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