Streaking Mustangs take aim at first basketball state crown
There’s a first time for everything, and the Central Arkansas Christian boys basketball team is experiencing that firsthand.
The Mustangs clinched their first spot in a state championship game Saturday when they got a basket from Grayson Wilson with less than 5 seconds left to beat Dumas. Today, they’ll get a chance to win the program’s first title when they face Bergman in the Class 3A boys state final at 1:45 p.m. at Bank OZK Arena in Hot Springs.
Understandably, there’s a buzz around the CAC hoops program that is unlike anything the team has ever encountered.
“You know, that’s part of the draw to [Central Arkansas Christian],” CAC Coach Matt Hall said of the school in North Little Rock. “It’s our community and the way people rally around you. They did that throughout the whole state tournament, but man, it’s just now starting to set in that it’s real, and we’re going to play for the title.
“Our community is so excited. We got home from Elkins at about 1:30 Sunday morning, and we had 10 or 15 parents waiting on us in the parking lot.”
The odds are high that there will be more than just a few handful of Mustang supporters in attendance when they take the floor against a familiar foe.
CAC (26-5) faced Berg- man (33-10) more than three months ago, and the Panthers walked away with a 65-46 victory. That loss dropped the Mustangs to 1-3 on the season, but they also went into that game a bit short-handed.
“We played them before we got our football guys in,” Hall said. “Football was still going on, so they got us pretty good. But me and Bo Martin, their coach, have known each other since we were little boys. His dad coached a De Queen where I grew up, and we’ve been friends for a long, long time.
“I don’t know that I respect anybody more in coaching than I do Bo. He does it the right way, and he loves his kids. There’s just going to be a lot of fun stuff about this game.”
Hall and Martin may have to put their friendship on the back-burner when tip-off rolls around. While CAC has never won a state crown, Bergman, which was runner-up to Manila a year ago, will be searching for its first since 1953.
The Panthers did get a leg up on the Mustangs during their earlier meeting, but they also indirectly lit a fire under Hall’s team. After that 19-point loss, CAC won its next 20 games before dropping a 75-59 decision to Lamar during the 3A-5 Conference Tournament final.
The Mustangs lost another game a week later — 66-52 to Riverview — in the semifinals of the 3A-3 Regional Tournament, but they’ve had four straight victories in what’s become a historic run.
“The guys never waver from what they do,” Hall said. “They’ve been consistent in working hard in practice, and they’ve been consistent in the good leadership they’ve shown. Honestly, we hit that rough stretch at a bad time when we got beat in the district finals. That put us on the same side as Riverview, and we didn’t play well at all against them.
“But those losses kind of helped us because we played angry after that. We felt like we lost some games that we shouldn’t have lost. It also put us in a really good spot in the state tournament.”
But one more win, and the Mustangs will be able to call themselves state basketball champions for the first time.
“It’s going to be tough because [the Panthers] are so well-coached and so disciplined,” Hall said. “We’re going to have to be very good defensively. They’re going to be able to run a lot of stuff. They can all dribble, pass and shoot.
“We’re going to have to be disciplined ourselves, then try to find a way to stretch out the score. They’re going to try to do the same thing to us and take away what we want to do. So I fully expect for this to be a dogfight.”