Crusaders reflect on state championship run
JACKSON, Tenn — After winning the state championship in 2006, the following season, the crusader boy’s basketball team had only one thing on their mind, Antwan Long the teams utility player explains.
“The will to dominate,” Ling said. “2007, it wasn’t about just winning, it was how we won.”
That didn’t go for just West Tennessee teams, but for nationally ranked programs all over as the Crusaders played a national schedule that season.
“Here we are from Jackson, Tennessee playing these national teams with these star studded athletes and players and we end up beating them, that just let me know how good we were,” Dexter Williams the former Crusader head coach said.
Winning games was easy for this Crusaders team. It’s what they did when no one was watching, that made things that way.
“They just got after it, they practiced so hard that the games were just easy,” Williams said.
“Compared to practice, the games were just a dress rehearsal,” Long said.
The team lost only three games that year, none to a Tennessee team and went on to blowout Memphis Mitchell in the state championship game to claim their second straight gold ball.
But most importantly they did something else along the way.
“Those boys were able to bring the whole city of Jackson together,” Williams said. “You know to pull for Jackson, not just Liberty but pull for Jackson.”
Those Crusaders were ranked seventh nationally in the Southeastern region. Coach Williams went on to say that after they won back to back titles, people from all over came up to him and told him that was the best basketball team they had ever seen at the high school level in Tennessee.
