BOURBON - Jeff Rupe points to a spot on the wall in the Triton gym. It's a banner. Listed on this banner are all of the years the Triton basketball team has won the Northern State Conference.

It's all of one. 1991 is the only year listed.

"That was the last time," Rupe, Triton's 5-foot-8 senior point guard, says. "We've won it one time. That's what we're shooting for."

Don't laugh. It could very well happen. Triton's basketball team is off to a 7-2 start this season. What folks in Bourbon already know, others are just starting to get the news: These Triton Trojans are for real.

That's right. Triton and for real in the same sentence.

Ask Caston coach Craig Teagle, who knew Triton coach Kevin O'Rourke when he attended Blackford High School. His Comets are off to a 7-2 start. One of the two losses came to Triton, 75-59 in the Culver Holiday Tournament.

"Triton just soundly beat us," Teagle says. "We were never in that game."

Ask Plymouth coach Jack Edison. His Pilgrims are 8-1, but they had to come back from a 30-24 halftime deficit to beat Triton 50-48. And that was at home. Seldom are the times teams saunter into Plymouth and gun down Edison's Pilgrims.

"Triton is extremely well-coached," he says. "Kevin O'Rourke does a great job with them. They're a hard-working, blue-collar team. They punch in and get the job done."

And win games.

The Trojans are 9-0 in their last nine home games, dating back to last season. That ties Warsaw for best in the area, who also has won nine regular-season home games in a row.

If you take the second half of last year and the first half of this year, the Trojans would have won the NSC. They are 8-0 in their last eight conference games. They are 3-0 in the conference this year.

Defensively, no team has scored more than 59 points against them. Offensively, they have shot 50 percent or better from the field in five games. If they have one statistic that deserves a star, it's free throws. The Trojans have attempted 25 or more free throws in six of the nine games. They have attempted 15 or more in all nine games. They turn the ball over just 11 times per game.

Their last five wins have all been by 10 points or more. The numbers go on and on.

To find out why today's Triton team is earning the accolades, you have to step back into the past.

Two years ago. That's when Teagle knew.

"When we played Triton that year, after we got home, the assistant coach and I both said that was the best junior varsity team we'd seen all year," Teagle says.

The Triton Trojan junior varsity team finished 18-2 two years ago. Sophomores on that team - Rupe, Scott Blackford, Cory Monesmith, Philip Reed and Bill Salyer - are now seniors. They are also the starting five on this year's team. Monesmith scores 17.9 points per game, and Reed and Rupe each add 13.

That's another reason they're winning: This group has been together for several years. Monesmith counted four losses in the fifth and sixth grades combined. He figured five more losses in the seventh and eighth grades.

Five years ago. That's when Rupe knew.

"This is what we always talked about in junior high," he says. "We couldn't wait to get up here."

Now they're here, here, of course, being varsity. No, it hasn't been easy, and this team has proof. Out of the first eight players O'Rourke puts in a game, none are taller than 6-1.

"We're just a bunch of six-footers out there," O'Rourke says.

What they lack in size, they make up for with speed. If they have a trump card over other teams, that's it. Triton is quick. Thus all the trips to the free throw line.

"They have the ability to do so many things off the dribble," Teagle says. "They have three or four players who can shoot the three. If you go out there and try to guard them, then they dribble around you. Quickness is a major factor to their success."

O'Rourke agrees with Teagle's assessment.

"I would say every team has a player or two as quick as our players," he says. "But at all five positions, we have quickness."

Teagle credits O'Rourke as being the other big reason for Triton's success.

"Kevin is an outstanding coach," he says. "He was the type of guy when you chose teams, he was the first guy you picked to be on your team."

O'Rourke is in his second year as Triton coach. His team went 11-11 last year and lost to Warsaw in the sectional semifinals. Now he has them clicking along this season.

Not bad for a 31-year-old head coach. O'Rourke had been an assistant coach before, but Triton is the first place he's been a varsity head coach.

When O'Rourke took the job, one of the first things he did was call his team a contender. Class sports or no class sports. Two thousand or 350 students. It didn't matter.

O'Rourke threw out the excuse book.

"My goal, every year, is I want to have a program that is the top of whatever class we're in," he says. "We want to have expectations of our program that every year we come in, our goal is to go to state and win state.

"We want out fifth-, sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders to think that way - that they can't wait for their opportunity to win a state championship."

The players must be hearing O'Rourke's message. The freshman team is 7-0 so far this season.

More than 350 high school varsity basketball teams exist in the state. The latest high school rankings by Jeff Sagarin have the Trojans at No. 51. Sagarin's ranking puts Triton as the No. 1 Class A basketball school.

But one thing about these Triton players: they remember where this program has been, where it's come from. They remember growing up and seeing more than one losing season here. They could probably tell you Triton was 22-62 from 1991 through 1995.

That's why they look at 7-2 as a nice start. Nothing more.

"We won't have proved anything," Reed says, "until we have a 16-4 or 17-3 season."

Like Edison, Salyer believes players on this team must remember to bring their hard hat to work each day. They can't afford to lose that "blue-collar" label that Edison used to describe their team.

"I think we decide our own fate," Salyer says. "If we work hard, we can be really good. If we start practicing bad, we'll start playing bad. Then it will end up being a .500 season."

For now, it's a .778 season, the winning percentage the Trojans own with a 7-2 record. They have accomplished one goal so far: winning the Culver Holiday Tournament. They did that, ending Caston's six-year reign as champion.

But these players have also done what no other recent Triton team could lay claim to. They've put themselves in a position to have a winning season. They've put themselves in a position to win the NSC, what Rupe tells you the team has done once in school history. They are the only 3-0 team in the conference right now.

And they've given the community a reason to believe.

"I think people in this area look at us for real," Blackford says. "But I think people all over the state are like, 'Who knows?'

"If we lose, we're back to where we started. If we keep winning, they'll see we're for real." [[In-content Ad]]