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Will Cherry knew his senior season was over. He had felt this stinging pain before.
With less than four minutes left in an ESPNU Bracketbuster matchup against Davidson, Will Cherry hobbled to the Montana bench, his team down 73-67.
“I felt it pop,” Cherry told his coaches and teammates as he limped on his left leg to the bench.
Trainers came over to wrap his right foot in a bag of ice. The relentless ferocity and competitive flame in the senior’s dark brown eyes were extinguished by a maroon towel drenched in sweat over his head. This was it. The second wrath of a foot injury left him hopeless, encompassing him in defeat, leaving him thinking about what should have been and what could have been.
Meanwhile, dread set in for his teammates. The Grizzlies had already lost him once, and they also lost their leading scorer, senior Mathias Ward, a game earlier to a left foot injury that later required the senior to miss the remainder of the season to surgery.
Cherry, The 6-foot-1 guard re-injured his right foot, the same foot he broke springing for a lay-in during a pickup basketball game on Sept. 26, a month before the Grizzlies started their quest for a second consecutive Big Sky Conference Championship.
The first time his foot popped, he expected to be out two-and-a-half months, plenty of time to make a comeback. This time, though, he would not have the luxury of time to allow him to heal. It was the second to last game of the regular season.
All of his previous offseason work, the 500-1000 shots each day with assistant coach and fellow Oakland, Calif., native Jonathon Metzger-Jones, was lost in a single moment of a regular season game that the Grizzlies lost in overtime to Davidson, 93-87.
“I was devastated because I had worked so hard to get to that point of where I was,” said Cherry, who soon after the game shifted his focus to his goal of playing professional basketball. “I was 99.9 percent sure that I was done. It popped the same exact way as when it did in the gym. I was getting mentally prepared for surgery.”
After the game, Cherry received a call from his mom. He told her it was broken. She told him to have faith, he didn’t know for sure. A day later, Feb. 24, X-ray results turned up negative.
“Why does it hurt the same as last time?” he asked doctors. A CT scan the next day did not reveal a break. There was hope.
“That one percent, that had to be a miracle,” Cherry said. of his probability that his foot wasn’t broken.
The two-time BSC Defensive Player of the year and school record holder for career steals would have one more shot to capture his third conference championship and possibly one more chance at winning his first NCAA Tournament game.
“It was a rush of euphoria,” Metzger-Jones said of Cherry’s return to the court on senior night, where he played 30 minutes. “We thought (he) was done, no question. But for Will Cherry, personally, to be able to finish his career — one of the best careers in the history of the school — that’s what got me so excited. He’s going to get a chance to finish it out the right way.”
This Friday, a humbled but hungry No. 5 will lead his team in the BSC semifinals, on the court he has called home for the past four seasons and in front of fans that have grown to love the electrifying playmaker. Even before the injuries, most didn’t expect Cherry to be playing for his third conference championship.
In high school, Cherry averaged 12 points, eight rebounds, five assists and four steals per game for Oakland area McClymond’s High. He scored a game high 19 points to go along with 14 rebounds, helping his eighth-ranked team in the nation capture the 2009 California Interscholastic Federation Division I Title.
Despite his impressive stats and performance, he drew no offers from big-time D-I programs, but Montana head coach Wayne Tinkle was impressed and jumped at the chance to snag the underrated guard.
His freshman season in college, Cherry played right away, helping the Grizzlies win a conference championship and secure a spot in the NCAA Tournament. Already, he thumped critics’ expectations. He continued to improve and after the hiring of Metzger-Jones, he spent countless hours in the gym perfecting his jump shot.
Metzger-Jones, a shooting specialist of sorts, trained Cherry to bring the ball up the middle instead of up swinging the ball from the left side of his body.
“Will’s shot was kind of like a sling-shot,” said Metzger-Jones. “He would make some because he’s a natural athlete, but he could never be really consistent doing it.”
The offseason work turned the steals master into a consistent offensive threat. Cherry went from shooting 22 percent from behind the arc his sophomore season to 38 percent as a junior. He shot almost 50 percent from the field in his junior year.
The lightning quick Cherry was turning the heads of collegiate coaches who had passed on recruiting him.
“I’ve had coaches come up to me without provocation, without me saying anything to them, and they say I cannot believe we did not go after Will Cherry,” Metzger-Jones said. “That’s how big of a difference Will has made in this program.”
Even when Cherry initially stepped on the court after his broken foot, his impact was felt.
“Will Cherry at 70 percent is probably better than most guards in our league at 100 percent,” Metzger-Jones said.
