The Comeback Of All Comebacks

THE POINT GUARD nearly drowned in his own house.

The coach lost his home.

The shooting guard spent five weeks in a cramped hotel room with no power or water.

Their leaky gym had no heat.

And they almost killed each other.

So you tell me: How in the world did Ehret High win the Louisiana state basketball championship?

"When you think about where we started," says Ehret's coach, Allen Collins, "it's nothing short of incredible."

Where they started was in Marrero, La., 10 minutes from New Orleans, on Aug. 28, 2005, the day Hurricane Katrina turned the whole area into a watery hell. "I was afraid for my life," says Ehret guard Gary Davis, who was trapped for days on the second floor of his house in New Orleans. "Choppers saw us and kept going past. I just kept thinking about hoops. It was the only thing that made me happy."

Hoops? The gym at Ehret High was a wreck. There would be no time for conditioning or weightlifting. But Collins wanted to try to play anyway. "I made a commitment to coach 'em, and I was gonna coach 'em," he says. Problem was, only four of 'em were left. The rest of his team was scattered as far away as Atlanta.

He found a couple of transfers and got the roster to six, but nearly every game was on the road. The team didn't have a single home game until January. And since there was no money in Ehret's budget for athletics, Collins couldn't even buy his kids aftergame pizza. They made do with Salvation Army meals and cold MREs donated by military personnel stationed at the school. "It's not like I could take 'em to McDonald's. All the McDonald's were closed," he says. Ehret even had to withdraw from a Thanksgiving tournament. Couldn't afford a bus driver.