In perfection, there is immortality.
A perfect season, a record, stands the test of time.
The trophies, engravings, photos, and memories will create a legacy that will last.
Manchester Academy’s junior high basketball team achieved that perfection this season with a 26-0 record and district championship.
When Jacob Iles took the job at Manchester, he came from the public-school ranks, so he didn’t have as much first-hand knowledge of the talent on the team.
He didn’t know exactly what he had.
Before the season began, there was a slight disconnect in the outlook for the team.
Iles knew his team had the potential to be good, but in his heart, he didn’t necessarily believe they could be as good as the players thought they could be.
“I remember one of the first meetings we had,” Iles said. “I asked them what their goals for the season were. I wanted team goals, not individual. Their two goals were to win the junior high district, which is every goal for a junior high team since that’s as far as you can go, and to go undefeated. If you had put a thought bubble over my head, you would have seen, ‘Yeah, right. How long can that last? 4-5 games?’”
Five games passed, and the Mavericks were still undefeated.
10 games went bye, and the right column in their win record remained at 0.
They began to beat some teams twice, showing that things weren’t a fluke.
Then district play began, and with it came a new challenge.
To try to get the best out of both the junior high and high school teams, Iles had been holding a few of his stars out for quarters during junior high games so that they could play longer later in the night.
As a perfect season became more and more clear, it became obvious that he may have to alter plans a bit.
“Early in the year, they were fine with it,” Iles said. “Towards Christmas when district play started, it was tougher. I told them that this was their junior high season. They only get one ninth grade year. That was the most important thing for them. I wanted to know what they wanted to do. If I could save them for three quarters or so of high school, I would have loved that, but winning the games was the focus. Managing quarters was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do.”
The wins continued to pile up, and then came the games with Greenville Christian, the team to beat in the district.
“We knew we were one of the best teams in our district, but then we had our first match against Greenville Christian,” Iles said. “We knew it was how we were going to measure ourselves. We were up by 20 when I started subbing. Then we played them there. We were down one point in the fourth quarter. We ended up winning by 12 points.”
Manchester’s Mavericks blew through the rest of the regular season with relative ease, though there were a couple of close games, including a one point win over Pillow Academy.
They eventually reached 24-0, earning the top seed in the district tournament.
The weight of the moment became suffocating, so their best option was to simply pretend it didn’t exist.
“For every inch we got closer, I started to feel it,” Iles said. “In hindsight, the guys said they did too, but I never felt that from them during the season. I didn’t want them to feel me get tight and have it roll onto them, so we just didn’t talk about it. Whenever anyone tried to talk to me about it, my wife, kids at school, parents, teachers, I just told them we were focused on the next game.”
After ending their regular season with a win over Tri-County, they had a rematch in the tournament with the Rebels for their third meeting of the year.
The Mavericks made easy work of the Rebels with a 42-28 win to set up a championship game against a familiar foe: Greenville Christian.
There were concerns in Iles’ mind heading into the championship games, particularly the difficulty level of defeating the same team three times in a season.
Greenville Christian, a great team in their own right, finished with only four losses on the season.
Three of them came from the Mavericks.
Manchester won the championship game 58-44 to finish the season undefeated and win the district title, accomplishing both preseason goals.
Offensively, the Mavericks were led by Parks Poe, who averaged 15.3 points per game to go with 3.8 rebounds and 2.3 steals per game.
Poe’s twin brother, Jon Riley Poe, was more of a defensive-minded guard with a team high 57 deflections (20 more than anyone else on the team), to go with a very respectable 7.7 points per game, 4.1 rebounds, and 2.3 steals.
According to Iles, the twins played better as a team than they did separated.
“I see a lot of their work together defensively,” Iles said. “We played a lot of man defense this year. Their hands are so quick, and their minds are so fast. They gamble a lot. They have a knack for working together. A lot of Parks’ points came from Jon Riley’s deflections on fast breaks. They’ve played together their whole lives, and you can tell that. As a whole, they play better together.”
In the post, Dylan Dendy dominated.
He had the unique ability to finish at the rim with either hand due to changing his shooting hand mid-season.
“He started shooting the ball left-handed, and he ended the season shooting the ball right-handed,” Iles said. “I’m not sure if someone told him to shoot left-handed or what, but his pure basketball shot is right-handed. After watching him for two games, I got him to start making the switch in practice. By the end of the year, he could finish with both hands down low, and if he missed, he would normally get his own rebound.”
That ability served Dendy well, allowing him to average 10.8 points per game. He also averaged 6.5 rebounds and 2.7 steals per game.
Point guard Will Peeler had the task of controlling the team’s pace, and Iles thought he did a tremendous job of that.
“Will Peeler dictated the pace for us this year at point guard,” Iles said. “I was always comfortable leaving the ball in his hands. He could rebound, score, and do a lot of things we needed.”
Peeler averaged 4.2 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 2.7 steals per game.
Along with the four leading scorers are a number of players that helped the Mavericks thrive and will help them thrive in the future.
“We had a lot of role players help this team out,” Iles said. “We had Tyler Bardwell, Reese Ragland, Tres Paul, and a lot of others. There are some pieces there, if they can stick together, to be a special team in the future.”
Going undefeated was never a real goal heading into the season for Iles, but it quickly became one.
And that’s not something he’s hoping to replicate any time soon.
“I can promise you that I’ll never have a team goal to have another undefeated season again,” Iles said. “It was way too nerve-racking for me.”
Iles will never forget the first team he coached to glory at Manchester, but he’ll remember them for much more than their wins.
“My lasting impression will be that this was a fun group to watch,” Iles said. “We didn’t always agree on philosophy, and they didn’t always get what I was trying to teach them. I saw a different vision at times, but we grew together. They loved playing together; they loved each other; and they loved playing basketball.”
The remainder of this group’s time on the court could go a number of ways.
They could rise to the challenges set before them and win an elusive state championship.
Injuries, slumps, lack of development, or any other reason could theoretically derail them entirely.
And there are hundreds if not thousands of ways it could all play out in-between.
What can’t be left to fate, however, is what has been done.
The 2017-18 Manchester junior high basketball team will forever and always be perfect.
