By Robert Wilson
Jackson Academy coach Jesse Taylor and his Raider boys basketball team are chasing history, trying to become the first JA team in 30 years to win back to back MAIS Overall Tournament championships.
In order to do that, they must rebound from disappointment, and that’s what the Raiders did Tuesday night in another tough game in the MAIS Class 6A league, considered by many the best in Mississippi.
JA had an emotional loss last Friday to rival Jackson Prep, breaking its 31-game MAIS winning streak, but were able to bounce back with a tough, 45-41 victory over Madison-Ridgeland Academy before an estimated 750 at MRA’s Duease Hall in Madison.
JA improved to 13-4 overall and 2-1 in MAIS Class 6A play, now tied with Prep and Hartfield Academy for first place after Hartfield’s 50-48 upset at Prep Tuesday in Flowood. MRA dropped to 12-8 overall and 1-3 in league play.
JA hasn’t won back-to-back Overall titles since coach Stan Jones and leading scorer Richard Lee in the 1993-1994 season and leading scorer Hastings Puckett in the 1994-1995 season led the Raiders to two consecutive championships.
JA finished 36-1 last season, the best record since those championship teams in the mid-1990s and now want to repeat what Jones, Lee and Puckett accomplished.
Despite JA not being at full speed, parttime starter Schyler Chambers (one of three seniors on the team) missed his second straight game with a knee injury, starting forward Tyler Lyles sprained his knee at Monday’s practice but played, and starting guard Marcus Goodloe was slowed by a thigh injury from the Prep game, JA hung on to survive MRA.
“Against Prep the wheels stopped turning and we couldn’t find our groove in the second half,” Taylor, who is in his third season as JA’s head coach. “We felt like we had a great first half, but we didn’t start off in the second half very well. The message after the game was, we found a way. In this conference, we just have to find a way. We need to find that groove again and we will come back. You can get a win on the road when things aren’t clicking if you stay the course. It was a good win. It was extremely frustrating with all the turnovers (18). It’s not like our guys don’t value the ball. Each one of our guys is trying to find that groove for the team. Don’t force your groove to come back, it just comes back. That really scared us with Tyler yesterday. He could barely walk. We didn’t know if we could have him for the game. He woke up this morning (Tuesday) and said he was about 60 percent. He was in pain, but thank the Lord, he fought. He found a way. Schyler is going to sit out this week and look at it the next week and go from there.”
“With the drills we do, we always practice more intense than our games. We just need to play hard every possession,” said Lyles, a 6-foot-2 junior who had a team-high 13 points (4 of 6 from the field, 1 of 2 from 3-point range, and 4 of 6 from the free throw line), with 5 rebounds and 3 assists. “We already knew we could never get comfortable; we need to stay calm, keep our composure, and still execute our plan.”
Senior guard and Mississippi College signee Caleb Gaitor bounced back from a poor shooting game against Prep with 12 points, 4 rebounds, 2 steals and 1 assist. Goodloe had 7 points, a team-high 7 rebounds, a team-high 4 assists and 1 steal.
JA led 11-6 after one quarter, 22-11 at halftime and 35-30 after three quarters. MRA had a chance to take the lead several times in the fourth quarter but couldn’t make the go-ahead shot.
MRA’s 6-foot-10 freshman center EJ Dampier – son of former Mississippi State and NBA star Erick Dampier, who is also an MRA assistant coach – had one of his best games of the season. Dampier – rated as the No. 1 player in the country in the Class of 2028 – had 22 points (10 of 14 shots from the field, including seven dunks), with 6 rebounds and 5 blocked shots. Senior guard Jas Smith – who missed last Friday’s game with St. Joe because of the flu – added 10 points.
photo by: Chris Todd
MRA coach Richard Duease – the winningest basketball coach in Mississippi history and the second winningest active boys basketball coach in the country – watched his team lose their fifth game by four points or less.
“We only scored 13 points in the first half, and we had a nice halftime visit and came out with a different outlook and picked up the intensity level,” said Duease, who has 1,846 wins (1,254 boys and 572 girls) with 41 state championships and 15 MAIS Overall Tournament titles (12 boys and three girls) in his 50 career seasons, the last 43 at MRA. “We still didn’t make enough shots. In all those close losses, free throws were a big part of them. We have a nice team, and we are going to get better. We hit only two 3s and we made 16 in a game earlier this season. It’s hard to figure.”
