5A BOYS AREA: Top-10 battle rematch of Memorial’s 2018 area-round win
Published 8:12 pm Thursday, February 21, 2019
- Kenneth Lofton Jr. of Memorial puts back a shot against Galveston Ball in Tuesday’s bi-district round victory. (I.C. Murrell/The News)
For a team that looks so much different from last season, some things have remained the same for the 5A eighth-ranked Memorial Titans.
They are district champions for the third year in a row (twice shared), and they have advanced to the area round of the UIL 5A boys basketball playoffs for the third straight time. For the second straight year, the Titans will meet Shadow Creek at La Porte High School.
Memorial (25-7) graduated nine seniors from last year’s team that beat the Alvin ISD’s Sharks 64-57 in the second round, en route to the state championship. The Titans simply reloaded for this season with 10 more seniors and a collection of skilled underclassmen including juniors Nate Clover and Kenneth Lofton Jr. and freshman Amaree Abram.
Out of the seniors, only guard Jaden Conner saw valuable playing time throughout last season.
“The majority of the team, it’s the first time in the playoffs,” said first-year Titans coach Alden Lewis, his predecessor Kenneth Coleman recently named the UIL’s 2018 coach of the year. “So, I understand it was some butterflies and some jitters.”
So far, the playoff experience feels nice for players like Lofton, as the Titans had to shake off losing a tiebreaker for the No. 1 seed to Barbers Hill.
“It just built our confidence,” Lofton said. “It was making us mad and everything, but we just came out here and played hard.”
Ninth-ranked Shadow Creek (26-5), in only its third year of existence, was favored to win the 5A Region III championship by the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches and returned eight varsity players from last season. Statistics for the Sharks were unavailable.
With a 51-45 win over Galveston Ball on Tuesday under the Titans’ belts, Lewis won’t make any more excuses for jitterbugs.
“We’ve got to execute better, on both sides of the ball,” he said. “We’ve got to play better as a team. We’ll be better, though.”
The winner will play either Houston Madison or Friendswood in the Region III quarterfinals. The semifinals and finals will be contested next weekend at Aldine ISD’s M.O. Campbell Center.
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I.C. Murrell: 721-2435. Twitter: @ICMurrellPANews
About I.C. Murrell
I.C. Murrell was promoted to editor of The News, effective Oct. 14, 2019. He previously served as sports editor since August 2015 and has won or shared eight first-place awards from state newspaper associations and corporations. He was born in Memphis, Tennessee, grew up mostly in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and graduated from the University of Arkansas at Monticello.
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