Hitchcock back at state, seeking 3A crown
The last time Hitchcock was on this stage, the Bulldogs took an early punch to the mouth from a San Antonio Cole team with loads of state tournament experience.
Cole jumped out to a 16-0 lead in last year’s Class 3A boys semifinals. The Bulldogs rallied and made it a competitive game, but they ultimately lost 53-49. The defeat ended another quest for the program’s first state championship.
But Hitchcock is back, and another opportunity awaits.
Ranked second in the state, the Bulldogs (29-7) will take on unranked Region II champion Hooks — located just 16 miles west of Texarkana on US-82 — in the semifinals at 1:30 p.m. Thursday at the Alamodome in San Antonio.
The other semifinal will match No. 5 Childress (27-7) against No. 7 Lytle (34-6) at 3 p.m. Thursday. The state championship game will be played at 10 a.m. Saturday.
“Those guys coming back, a lot of them played in a lot of big football games this past year,” said fifth-year coach Chris Jordan-Foster, a 2001 Hitchcock graduate. “Experience is always going to help out. I don’t think we were nervous last year — we just had a bad start to the game. But those guys know what to expect, and they’re going to come out and leave it all on the floor.”
Hooks (32-5) has won 11 straight and came out of a region where many expected top-ranked Dallas Madison to claim the title. With Madison, the defending state champion, dropping out in the regional quarterfinals, Hitchcock will be the highest-ranked team at the state tournament.
Hitchcock captured its second straight Region III title Saturday, rolling to a 65-44 victory over New Waverly in the final. The Bulldogs have beaten all of their playoff opponents by double digits, including an impressive 43-31 triumph against No. 3 Lorena in the regional semifinals. They also beat No. 18 Orangefield and No. 23 Diboll on their postseason path.
“We’ve taken the onegame-at-a-time approach,” Jordan-Foster said. “Last year, I know a lot of people were telling us, ‘Well, you guys will get back (to state) next year. You got everybody coming back.’ But coming out of Region III in any classification, it’s hard. It’s very hard. So we knew what type of journey it was going to be to get back. One of the goals was just to repeat as Region III champions and put ourselves in position to win a state championship again.”
The Bulldogs have done just that, and they’re playing with a lot of confidence.
Hitchcock has won 20 consecutive games and has not lost since the calendar flipped to 2023. The team has scored 100-plus points eight times this season, and its only losses have come against schools in larger classifications. Five of the Bulldogs’ seven losses came in their first six games as they tested their mettle in non-district play.
“They’ve always had confidence,” Jordan-Foster said. “We practice very hard, and we’ve always had that same approach like we had last year. … They like to practice hard, and they like the competition. Sometimes we have to dial it back some because they get after it pretty hard. But with us getting out of that region, we won games in just about every kind of way you can imagine — slowed down, fast paced. So they’re playing with confidence, and they’re pretty high on it.”
Hitchcock has leaned on the experience of players like junior guard Damien McDaniel, sophomore guard Elijah Sherwood and sophomore forward Lloyd Jones III, who all started at state last season. That was expected, of course. But Jordan-Foster has also been impressed with how some of the role players on the roster have delivered in big moments.
“I think that’s a little bit different than last year,” Jordan-Foster said. “We have younger role players, and those guys have really stepped up into their own and understood what they’ve had to do. Last season, we had seniors who were role players who already knew what was going on. This group has learned and grown up, especially the guys that come off the bench. They have really had to step in, and they’ve pushed our starters.”