The next Crown possession ended in a contested miss. Peak secured the rebound. Zack immediately pushed the pace. This time, Devon picked Stan up on the wing and stayed attached to him throughout the possession.
The ball swung to Marcus. Marcus attacked the paint. The defense collapsed. He kicked the ball back out. Stan caught it with Devon’s hand directly in his face.
He pump-faked. Devon bit instantly. The senior left his feet. Stan drove. One step. Two. The lane opened. A help defender slid over.
For a split second, dunking was an option. Stan dismissed it immediately. He still wasn’t comfortable unleashing his full explosiveness around ordinary players.
Instead, he adjusted in midair and laid the ball softly off the glass, absorbing contact as Devon recovered and crashed into him from behind.
The whistle shrieked. And one.
The Peak bench erupted. Zack was already halfway onto the court before the assistant coach grabbed him. Marcus clapped both hands together.
Even the crowd sounded different now. Not supportive. Not yet. But no longer entirely mocking.
Stan stepped to the line. The free throw dropped cleanly through the net. 7-5, Peak.
The lead wasn’t large. It wasn’t safe. But it was theirs.
The first quarter continued in a back-and-forth battle that the Velaris Crown crowd had clearly not expected. Stan scored eleven points in the quarter. Three three-pointers. An and-one. A smooth mid-range jumper. Seven shots. Eleven points. His efficiency was becoming impossible to ignore.
Crown adjusted. They began sending extra defenders at him whenever he touched the ball on the perimeter, daring the rest of Peak to beat them.
The rest of Peak accepted the challenge. Zack orchestrated the offense with calm precision. Marcus repeatedly exploited the extra spacing inside. Even the bench players, energized by the unexpected momentum, knocked down a pair of important baskets when their numbers were called.
By the end of the first quarter, Peak led 22-19. The arena sounded very different from how it had sounded ten minutes earlier. The "PEAK SO WEAK" chant had faded into a confused, watchful murmur.
Across the floor, the small Peak section had found its voice. Students were standing now, cheering every possession and celebrating every stop, making up for their lack of numbers with pure enthusiasm.
Sophie had long since abandoned any attempt at sticking to choreographed cheers. She was simply yelling. Every basket, every defensive stop, and every possession.
"LET’S GO, STAN!"
"COME ON, PEAK!"
"THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!"
Maya wasn’t much better. The two of them were louder than half the section combined.
Fiona, meanwhile, had spent almost the entire quarter behind her camera. Her lens tracked Stan through every possession. Every drive, every shot, and every celebration. The rapid clicks of the shutter never seemed to stop.
When Stan buried a step-back three in the closing moments of the quarter, a shot Peak had never practiced and one he seemed to create entirely from instinct and enhanced perception, both Sophie and Maya shrieked at exactly the same moment. Sophie’s hand clamped around Maya’s wrist. Neither of them noticed. They were too busy jumping up and down in celebration.
For one brief moment, two rivals were completely united by a single fact: Stan Harrison was dominating a basketball game. And Fiona captured all of it. By the end of the night, the photo series she was building would become the most viewed set the school paper had ever published.
The second quarter brought Crown’s adjustment. They went small. A different defender picked up Stan, a quicker, scrappier guard named Tobi who shadowed him relentlessly and bumped him on every cut. The objective was obvious; wear him down, disrupt his rhythm, and force him into mistakes.
It worked, partially. Not because Tobi was shutting him down, but because Stan was still keeping his strength under control. Crown’s defenders were playing aggressively, and one careless mistake could leave an ordinary player seriously injured.
He missed two early shots. Crown immediately capitalized. They ripped off a 9-2 run and reclaimed the lead. The home crowd sensed blood. Their volume surged.
"PEAK SO WEAK!"
"PEAK SO WEAK!"
"WE WARMED YOU UP! NOW IT’S OVER!"
Zack called timeout. Peak gathered around the bench. Unlike the crowd, Zack looked completely calm. "They’re throwing everything at Stan," he said. "So we adjust." He pointed toward Marcus. "You’re taking Tobi off him with a high screen." Then toward Stan. "When the switch comes, slip to the corner." His gaze swept across the rest of the team. "Everyone else spreads the floor. Make them choose."
The play worked immediately. Marcus set a punishing screen. Tobi was forced to switch. Stan slipped into the corner. The pass found him with just enough space. He shot. SWISH!
The Peak section exploded. The Crown crowd quieted.
The next four possessions brought more of the same. Peak ran variations of the play again and again. Stan scored on three of them. On the fourth, he drew the defense and fired a perfect cross-court pass to Zack for an uncontested layup.
The momentum swung completely after that. Peak closed the half on a devastating 16-5 run as Crown’s defense struggled to recover from the adjustment. By halftime, Peak led 47-38.
The Velaris Crown student section, which had spent the previous week roasting Peak University across every available platform, had fallen noticeably quieter. The occasional chant of "PEAK SO WEAK!" still surfaced from a few stubborn diehards, but even those sounded increasingly ironic.
The halftime buzzer echoed through the arena. Players from both teams began walking toward their locker rooms.
As Stan crossed the floor, he glanced toward the visitor section. Sophie had clearly been waiting for that moment. The instant their eyes met, she threw both hands into the air in a tiny victory celebration before pointing both index fingers at him. Her lips formed four unmistakable words.
’That’s my man.’
Then she blew him a kiss.
Beside her, Maya rolled her eyes at the display. A second later, however, she looked directly at Stan and offered a proud, lingering smile that carried its own unspoken message.
Fiona stood just behind them. The moment the expressions crossed their faces, she lifted her camera.
Click!
The photograph was captured forever.
Stan continued toward the locker room with the composed focus of a man who had eighteen points in his first collegiate half, a nine-point lead on the road against a favored opponent, and a growing suspicion that he was going to enjoy the second half considerably more than the first.
Behind him, the Velaris Crown crowd was beginning to realize exactly what kind of night this was becoming.