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When there’s a Will, there’s a way.

Morristown West had its back against the wall and seemed to be on its way to another ugly defeat to Dobyns-Bennett.

The Trojans had no answers for the Indians’ press, and the explosive D-B offense was heating up as it built a 10-point lead with five minutes left in the third.

Enter Will DesGroseilliers.

The senior caught fire and went on a 9-2 run by himself, capping it off with a triple to cut the Indians’ lead to 33-30.

Joey Mihalko then followed with a pair of free throws to cut it to just one.

Then came the exclamation point.

Jamere Williams threw down three dunks in less than two minutes, flipping the momentum and giving West a 41-36 lead as it held on for a 57-54 win on Tuesday night at Mike Reed Gymnasium.

With the win, West (17-9, 6-1 District 1-4A) can claim the No. 1 seed in the district tournament if it beats East on Friday.

“It was an unbelievable win for our program,” West head coach Joe Dobyns said. “Those guys have worked so hard to have this opportunity tonight. We had to come in last night to get a win, a hard-fought win on our floor, to be able to give ourselves an opportunity for tonight, to mean what it means now. And I just couldn’t be more proud of them. Guys stepped up. You know, we had some adversity. We got ahead, they came back. And the guys really just hung in there and did the things we asked them to do. They executed the defensive game plan we asked them to do and held an extremely good Dobyns-Bennett team to 54 points, which is an unbelievable effort on our guys’ part. I couldn’t be happier for them.”

DesGroseilliers finished with a game-high 23 points, and Williams’ eight points felt like 20 with the momentum they provided. When DesGroseilliers and Williams weren’t scoring, Julian Sexton delivered big shots in the second half to keep the Trojans fighting. He finished with 11 for a third straight double-digit outing.

“They have really been coming on strong the last week or so,” Dobyns said. “Their production has been really good, and their leadership has been good. They’ve been trying to lead guys as well as just being productive on the floor. We’ve had some guys be more vocal from a leadership standpoint, and they’ve really come a long way.”

To make the win all the more impressive, it was just three weeks ago on Jan. 20 when the Indians ran the Trojans off the floor in Kingsport for a 46-point beatdown, which is still West’s lone district loss.

The Trojans circled this matchup the moment they left Kingsport, and they have still been able to handle business to make Tuesday’s matchup about more than revenge.

“It’s been in the back of our mind, but, you know, we really just tried to focus on the games in front of us,” Dobyns said. “We had a lot of time off. We had a lot of games canceled, so it’s kind of hard to get in a rhythm, and everybody was going through that. So it was really just trying to focus on one game at a time, because you didn’t know when you were going to be able to play. We had to make sure that when opportunities came, we took care of them. And last night (against West Ridge), I was worried about that because I was afraid the guys were going to be looking to today, but they did a good job last night, keeping focused. We found a way to pull that one out to give ourselves an opportunity to have a big one tonight.

“We didn’t put our best foot forward at their place, and they had a lot to do with that, but we felt like we could play better, and I thought we did tonight. We didn’t back down. We didn’t let that get us down. We continued to fight. And we talked about yesterday that it was going to be a four-quarter fight and battle, and it was. It took everything we had to come out of there with a three-point win.”

The fireworks didn’t light until the second half, and it took nearly five minutes for either side to make a field goal.

D-B was the first to break through and built a 10-3 lead, but Williams put in an and one with six seconds left. On the ensuing inbound, Jake Bunch got a steal and dished it to Anderson Noe, who finished an and one to quickly erase the deficit to 10-9 to end the quarter.

West briefly took a lead to open the second before D-B’s Carter Atwood drilled two threes as part of a 10-run, and the Indians took a 20-15 lead to end a low-scoring half.

Kingsport then went on its run and seemed to be on its way to a win before DesGrosielliers and Williams worked their magic to flip the game on its side, and West took a five-point lead into the fourth.

DesGroseilliers’ spark continued into the final frame, putting in a lay and a three to help give West a 47-38 lead, its largest of the game.

However, D-B wasn’t done yet and used a 13-3 run to storm back and take a 51-50 lead.

Sexton responded with an and one, and Noe layed one in to get the Trojans back in control at 55-51.

The Indians followed with a triple, and Sexton knocked in a pair at the stripe with 25 seconds to go to set the final score. DesGroseilliers missed a pair of free throws to ice it, but D-B missed a contested three at the buzzer to give West the win.

The Trojans have a homecoming matchup on Thursday with Sevier County, and then they look to solidify the No. 1 seed at East on Friday.

“We got to rein it back in just a little bit, because like I said, tonight doesn’t mean anything if we don’t go get the job done on Friday.”