Ragin Prep claims SCISA Class A boys basketball state championship
Rams knock off defending champion Curtis Baptist 57-52
Sumter – The Ragin Preparatory Christian Academy boys basketball team had a thought on its mind from the end o the 2023-24 season all the way back to the the ’24-25 campaign
Curtis Baptist won the SCISA Class A state championship with a 29-1 record last season. The lone loss was to the Rams in the regular season. “We’ve held on to that since we lost in the semifinals last year,” said RPCA head cach Anthony Jackson. “We were hoping to get another chance at it,”
The teams had a regular-season game cancelled because of winter weather, but Ragin Prep got its opportunity against the Eagles in the state chammpionship game on Saturday at Sumter County Civic Center. In its fourth season with a boys basketball program, RPCA won the state title with a 57-52 triumph.
“We got what we wanted and we executed,” Jackson said.
“It means a lot to win this,” said senior Omari Myers, who was on the team as a freshman when the program started “It means we put all that hard work in. We aspired to go to state and win it, and we finally did it. We reached our goal.”
The 6-foot-4-inich Myers in the first hal and the 6-6, 250-pound Kavontaty Rose in the second half were the main reasons Ragin Prep were victorious. Myers hiad six of his 10 points in the second quarter, helping the Rams stay in the game. They trailed 14-7 after one quarter buit narrowed the gap to 30-26 at halftime.
In the second half, Rose got back on the floor after sittiing out most of the second qua4ter due to foul trouble. Jackson planted the big, young man in the low post and he went for 15 of his 18 points.
“I was trying to bring us back in the game,” said the softspoken Rose. “I was just trying to get us hyped.”
“All season long Kavontay and Omari have been leading the train, they’ve been our bread and butter,” Jackson said. “He was in foul trouble, so once we got him back on the floor we decided, ‘Hey, let’s give him the ball. Let him bring us home.’ He put us on his back and brought us home.”
Rose got 10 of his 15 second-half points in the third quarter at RPCA took a 42-40 lead into the final stanza. Ragin Prep took its irst lead of the second half on a Rose layup with 2:25 left in the third quarter to make it 37-36.
The Crusaders’ Tre Wright drilled a 3-point basket to make it 39-37 with 1:53 let. Rose hit a free thriow and consecutive layups to push the lead to 42-39 with 31 seconds to go, giving RPCA the lead for good.
“They got us in foul trouble down low, and when they did that they kept goig there, makig it tough on us,” Curtis Baptist head coach David Salley. “He (Rose) was just too tough for us to handle in there.”
A trey by K’den Shannon and a Myers layup pushed Ragin Prep out to a 52-43 with 3:27 left in the game. Curtis Baptist never got any closer than four points the rest of the way, that coming at 56-52 with eight seconds left.
Rose was one of three Rams in double igures, leading the way with 18 points. Shannon had 14, and Myers finished with 10. KayShawn Rutherford had nine, Cordell Sims and Zymir Robinson-Hill both had two, and Aiden Zuell had one.
Trez Mincey led Curtis Baptist with 21 points. Kaleb Burnett and Wright both had 12 points, Brayden Husband had three and Trail Highsmith had two.
Salley was pleased to see his team make its way back to the title game.
“We lost two starters from last year, and thwy were the catalysts or the team,” he said. “So we kind of had to rebuild around who we had back. This group dod a good jbb doing that,.”
Rose, Robinson-Hill and Rutherford were selected to the All-Tourament team from Ragin Prep. Curtis Baptist’s Mincey and Wright were selected to the team as was Richard Winn Academy’s Charlie Bonds.
The Rams finished with just a 14-14 overall record. However, they played numerous games against South Carolina High School League teams.
“It made us tougher, giving us hat bump we really needed to run with these guys,” Myers said of the difficult schedule.
Jackson said winning state was the culmination of a kit I wirj,
“We started this four years ago,” Jackson said “We get to practice one hour a day (at the local parks and recereation department gymnasium in Sumter:. How many teams that play for a state championship get to practice one hour a day? That’s a testament to our guys and the hard work they 0ut in .”
