(The Oakland Press/JOSE JUAREZ) Clarkston’s Alex Wilson (right) looks for room as Troy defender Tom Judy pursues.

TROY — Welcome to the last week of the regular season for boys soccer teams around the state, where one of two scenarios usually takes place.

Either league titles are settled, or teams play games with nothing at stake, where the primary objective is to make sure nobody gets hurt.

For Clarkston on Tuesday against Troy, the former was the scenario, although as a result of what the Wolves did against the Colts, the latter will be the case in Thursday’s regular-season finale against Troy Athens.

The Wolves officially sewed up the Oakland Activities Association Red title with a 2-1 win over the secondplace Colts, and now will just hope they can get through Thursday’s game against Athens healthy before the state playoffs begin next week (yes, already).

“I think if you are in contention for the league title, you have to honor it and try and win it instead of shutting it down,” Clarkston head coach Adam Bican said. “That’s what they did. Troy is a fantastic team and it was nice to be able to play them. The game was fantastic. It was clean and it was back-andforth.”

Clarkston (12-4-2, 9-2 OAA Red) opened the scoring with 4:13 left in the first half when senior Brandon Verlinden scored on a penalty kick to make it 1-0 Wolves. Verlinden was taken down in the box, but officials didn’t blow the whistle until a few seconds after the play.

After conferring, the officials ruled it was a foul and awarded the penalty kick.

The score remained that way until the second half, when the officials turned around and gave Troy a penalty kick after Colts’ forward Joe Beshara was tripped just inside the box near the sideline.

Beshara didn’t make any mistake burying the penalty kick to tie the game at, 1-1, with 28:11 left in the game.

It didn’t take long for Clarkston to re-establish control, as senior Alex Pappas scored the eventual gamewinning goal, with 27:05 remaining in the game.

After fielding a service into the top of the Troy box, Pappas neatly dribbled the ball away from a charging Troy goalie and then buried the chance into the open net.

“It was very special,” Bican said of the goal. “I can’t say enough about that kid. He works so hard and he’s a special player. He’s a very important part of the team. Everybody played well all the way around. It was a team effort.”

Following the game against Athens, the Wolves, who are the defending state runner-up in Division 1, will then gear up for what they hope is another deep run in the playoffs.

Clarkston will open play in the Lake Orion district against Holly.

Troy is also looking forward to the playoffs, where the Colts are preparing for a brutal district that’s being hosted by Auburn Hills Avondale.

It’s going to be a powerpacked grouping, with Troy, Athens, Rochester, Rochester Adams, Stoney Creek, Utica, Utica Eisenhower and host Avondale ready to duke it out on what figures to be a slow grass field at Avondale.

The good news for the Colts is that they’ll get to play on artificial turf in their playoff opener when they play at Rochester on Tuesday.

“You still have to progress, play well and do the things you worked on all year,” Troy head coach Dave Hicklin said.

“We don’t want to peak now. We want to peak (next week) and work our way up to it.”

Hicklin said Beshara, one of the area’s top forwards, suffered a back injury against Clarkston and should know more this week how serious it really is.

Ironically, Troy’s last game of the regular season will also be against Rochester on Friday night at Troy.

“We’ll just get him healthy for next Tuesday and see how we do against Rochester,” Hicklin said.