SCHSL boys basketball: Highlights of Wren’s 77-63 win at T.L. Hanna
Abijah Franklin scored 38 points Wednesday night as Wren won at T.L. Hanna, 77-63. Lucas Wiersma scored 25 for the Yellow Jackets.
The best feels a need to be even better.
Wren basketball senior Abijah Franklin, 2023-24 Class AAA high school state player of the year, finished last season with heartbreak and disappointment as the defending champion Hurricanes lost to rival Powdersville, 47-46, in the Upper State title game.
Powdersville, after losing twice to Wren in the Region 2 regular season, went on to win its first state championship.
“That really hurt our feelings,” Franklin said. “We felt like we should’ve had it. Everybody was so down. We went the whole year thinking we were going to win it. … I feel like it really turned into motivation.”
Franklin, a 6-foot-5 combo guard who has signed with Furman, averaged 23.4 points and 6.9 rebounds in being named player of the year. This season Franklin has been even better, averaging 36.3 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.4 steals.
“He’s like a magician,” Wren coach Fran Campbell said. “He can turn sideways and almost disappear, you know? There’s no room and he just goes and he turns and he gets through. Then it opens back up.
“Another thing that helps him is he can finish with either hand. It doesn’t matter, especially around the basket. He can even make jumpers left-handed, but I don’t let him do that.”
Franklin’s ability to squeeze into tight spaces also means that he draws plenty of contact. Defenses collapse on him and make it difficult as possible when he drives to the basket.
“That’s the physical nature of it,” Franklin said. “Coach Campbell expects us to fight through it with no complaining. You know it’s going to be a dog fight.”
Franklin shot 101 free throws last season, making 64%, a number that Franklin and Campbell both said needs to improve.
“The only thing he needs to get better at is free throws,” Campbell said. “How can you shoot as good as he does and miss free throws? We want him to draw fouls. That’s what he’s good at.”
With all that contact Franklin absorbs during games, it might seem to reason that the Hurricanes would take it lightly on him during practices. Not so.
“We give him a taste of it in practice,” Campbell said. “We don’t allow him to drive in practice. We’ll hammer him or grab him because he’s got to get used to that.”
Wren has been reclassified into AAAA and is a top contender in Region 2 along with Westside.
Franklin could be on his way to being named the state’s top player in the higher classification as well. But it just wouldn’t mean the same, he said, if the Hurricanes don’t win the championship.
“I want to be a leader and for us to finish on top,” Franklin said. “I want to motivate my teammates – on the court, on the bench, everywhere.”
Todd Shanesy covers high school athletics for the Greenville News, Spartanburg Herald-Journal and Anderson Independent Mail in the USA TODAY Network. Contact him by email at todd.shanesy@shj.com. Follow him on X, formerly called Twitter, at @ToddShanesySHJ.
