So far this season, the Central High School Jaguars have recently won eight straight games in varsity basketball bringing their current record to 11-3.
After recently defeating the Jay High School Royals in their Christmas Basketball Tournament, Coach Tony McDonald said the Jaguars will face a challenge in rematch games against district opponents Laurel Hill School, Malone School, and Paxton School following the Christmas break.
‘They have beat us by an average of 20 points or more (earlier this season),” McDonald said.
McDonald hopes his team will be better prepared for the district rematch games, the three schools are the only opponents to defeat the jaguars, thus far in the season.
Following a January 6th matchup at Jay, the Jaguars will face all three district opponents in back-to-back games. Both Laurel Hill and Paxton will be away games and Malone will play at Central.
In these games, Jaguars will have junior point guard Cody Abel on the court, McDonald said.
So far, the team’s leading scorer is senior Zac Wright, who is averaging 17 points and 9 rebounds a game, McDonald said.
The team’s success is no surprise to McDonald, who plans to retire following this season.
“We knew we would have a pretty good team this year,” he said.
Current junior varsity coach Wes Mathews will take over as coach next year.
McDonald said the team had several freshmen and sophomores starting last year, many of them taking last year’s experiences into this season.
While McDonald is looking forward to his team playing against divisional opponents for the second time this year, he said his team should not let their upcoming opponent’s 2-9 record catch them off guard.
“(Jay’s) record is deceiving, they have a good basketball team,” McDonald said.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Basketball: Central on a roll in coach’s final season