Cathedral Academy tops Charleston Collegiate 60-43 to win third straight SCISA AA boys basketball title

      Sumter – Having lost four starters, eight seniors and 10 players from last season’s SCISA AA boys basketball state championship team, the general consensus was Cathedral Academy would see its run of consecutive state championships end at two.

           The 2025-26 edition of the Generals didn’t get the memo.

           Cathedral made it three in a row on Saturday at Sumter County Civic Center, beating Region 2 foe Charleston Collegiate for the fourth time in as many games, this time by a 60-43 count.

           “It’s really special, losing 10 guys off of last year’s team, eight seniors, to win it again,” said Generals head coach Blake Ferguson. “Nobody gave us a shot. It’s special because it’s a whole new group. We basically moved up our junior varsity team and had a couple of additions.

“We don’t have the star power we’ve had in the past. It’s a real team, not a lot of individuals. We play as a team so well.”

Amare Jeter was the lone returning starter and the only senior on the roster. He’s in his third year at the North Charleston school and has known nothing but being a state champion. He said he and his teammates felt slighted at the start of the season.

“A lot of people kind of left us out,” Jeter said. “We were left out of a lot of rankings, so we had a chip on our shoulder, it lit a fire under us, and we used it to win this game.”

Junior Malachi Scott is in his first year with the Generals. He said he and his teammates put in the work needed to accomplish this goal.

“We all worked all summer,” Scott said. “We all came together, we all committed to the team, we all made each other better, worked all year and now at the end of the year we got what we deserved.”

Cathedral indeed put in the work, playing a whopping 43 games, finishing the year with a 33-10 record.

The Sun Devils finished 15-9 with four of the losses coming to the Generals. Cathedral won by the scores of 67-51, 39-37 and 65-39 in the first three meetings.

That familiarity led Ferguson to make the decision to throw something different at Charleston Collegiate on Saturday. Instead of slowing down the Sun Devils, Ferguson said it hindered his team instead.

“I wanted to go with a quick trap on that first pass, rotate and try to get some turnovers,” he said. We didn’t.”

That led to the Generals trailing 10-7 after one quarter with Charleston Collegiate scoring the first points of the second quarter to push the lea to five. That’s when Ferguson decided to ditch the trap and go back to old tried and true.

“We went back to what we know, what we do well – full-deny, full-court press – and it sparked us,” he said. “We went from down five to up 10 in that quarter.”

Cathedral limited the Sun Devils to just four points the rest of the quarter while putting up 19 to take a 26-16 lead at halftime.

“We didn’t expect them to come out and punch us,” said Scott, who scored 10 points in the second quarter. “Coach made some adjustments and we adjusted perfectly to his plan, and it was all said and done from there.”

The Generals continued to pour it on in the third quarter, both offensively and defensively. They limited Charleston Collegiate to just seven points while scoring 17 to take a 43-23 lead into the final quarter.

As to Ferguson’s statement about the team concept, six different players scored during the quarter. Junior Jake Moody, the only other player besides Jeter to play in last year’s title game, started the scoring with a layup. Sophomore Joel Loucard had a trey and a layup, junior Braydon Thompson had a layup, Scott had three points, sophomore Dylan Trasca canned a 3, and Jeter hit a layup.

Scott led Cathedral in scoring with 21 points. Loucard added 15, Jeter had 11, Tasca had five, and junior point guard Kobe Grant, Moody, eighth-grader Paul Felder and Thompson had two apiece.

Charleston Collegiate’s two senior starters, Grant Morrison and Thomas Reed, were its leading scorers. Morrison led the way with 18 points, while Reed had 12. Junior Kani Butler had five, and junior Gavin Mullen and sophomore Jahmari Powell both had four.

Cathedral and Charleston Collegiate filled the six spots on the All-Tournament with three selections apiece. The Generals selected were Loucard, Jeter and Scott, while the Sun Devil picks were Butler, Morrison and Reed.

Being that it’s his senior year and was the only senior on the team has made this third championship special to Jeter.

“It means a lot, you know,” he said. “Having eight seniors last year and having to step up as a leader of a team that’s never been before, having a lot of young guys, it means a lot. I got to express my talents and show what I could do too.”