Wildcats complete sweet sweep
LAKELAND — It’s been a banner sports year for Wildwood, the smallest public school in the coverage area. And the Wildcats can hang another championship banner after staving off Blountstown to win 62-56 in Tuesday afternoon’s Class 1A state championship game.
The Wildcats (23-7) led from the opening basket to claim the school’s second FHSAA championship in a span of eight days.
Wildwood’s girls basketball team repeated as 1A champs last week. The winter sports state sweep came on the heels of a breakout 9-0 regular season for the Wildcats football team.
“It felt about as good as I always dreamed it would,” 14th-year boys basketball coach Von Moreland said of the victory. He’s also athletic director for the small Sumter County school where middle schoolers and high schoolers share a campus.
The principal, Richard Hampton, is also the girls basketball coach.
Senior guard Darion Wilson wrapped up his Wildwood career with 23 points on 10-of-14 shooting from the field.
Marcus Niblack, a 6-foot sophomore major college prospect, added 22 points. Niblack’s senior sister, Kari, led the the Wildcats girls team.
Wildwood became the eighth school to sweep FHSAA boys and girls basketball championships in the same school year — the first in 11 seasons dating to Pine Castle Christian in 2006-07.
Leesburg’s lineup has changed very little since the Yellow Jackets captured their 2016-17 boys basketball championship.
Having state tournament veterans in seniors Keon Ellis and Cordrayius Graham and junior Lance Erving is comforting for coach Sean Campbell.
What has his him worried is that the schedule for this week’s 2018 FHSAA finals looks a lot different. Leesburg (27-1) will play Sarasota Booker (29-2) in a Class 6A semifinal tonight at 8 p.m. and if successful, would tip off less than 24 hours later in a Thursday 7 p.m. championship game against either Palatka (28-2) or Tallahassee Rickards (21-7) in Lakeland.
A year ago, Campbell’s team played its semifinal on Thursday and final on Saturday, with a day off in between.
Leesburg is again long on quickness but short on depth. It relied mostly on its top six players.
“I tried to stay away from scheduling too many back-to-back games because I knew that would be tough for us,” Campbell said. “We get after people on defense and our guys play a lot of minutes.”
Leesburg went mostly with an eight-man roster before calling up two JV players for the playoffs.
“Knowing that we’ll be playing the next day, hopefully, we’re probably going to have to play everybody (tonight),” Campbell said. “I’m going to have to pick my spots.”
VARSITY RESULTS, SCHEDULE
Master’s Academy coach Reggie Kohn doesn’t need a maps app to find the state basketball tournament. He’s been to Lakeland as a head coach nine times and as an assistant to his dad once in the past 14 seasons — starting with his 2003-04 rookie season as a head coach fresh out of college basketball at USF.
He’s back, this time directing a Master’s Academy team that is breaking new ground. The Eagles (22-7), who had won one region playoff game in program history, will play on unfamiliar turf but against a familiar foe when they play Gainesville P.K. Yonge (18-11) in a Class 4A state semifinal at 10 a.m.
Master’s beat the Blue Wave 57-56 at the Holiday Basketball Classic of the Palm Beaches in December when guard Jose Placer drove the length of the floor and dropped off a pass to forward Emanuel Hernandez for a buzzer-beating layup.
Master’s’ top five scorers, Placer (22 points, 4.9 assists per game), Joe French (11.8 ppg.), Hernandez (11.0), Connor Doobay (8.2) and Christian Jones (7.3) are all seniors.
“This is a special group,” Kohn said. “They genuinely want each other to do well. They really play for each other.”
Master’s heated up at he right time, winning 15 of its past 17 games.