Milton Eagles Overcome Adversity To Qualify For State

By Mike Blum

MILTON, GA -- From the outset, this has been a season of adversity for the Milton Eagles boys basketball team.

The Eagles began the season with an extremely inexperienced lineup after losing five of their top six players from last year’s state semifinalists. Five of the team’s top eight players are either freshmen or sophomores, including three of the Eagles’ primary guards. Of those eight, Milton lacks a true post player, with reserve J.P. McGhee, listed in the roster at 6-3, the Eagles’ strongest inside presence.

The team’s top player, Duke commit Alex O’Connell, is listed at 6-6 and can play inside, but operates mainly on the perimeter on offense. Because of his height, O’Connell is the Eagles’ leading rebounder, and the team’s absence of size inside requires Milton to play an aggressive style of defense that forces turnovers, but also allows some open looks and relatively easy baskets.

Milton plays fast-paced basketball, using the athleticism of its perimeter players to get the ball to the basket as quickly as possible. That style served them well in the Jan. 27 showdown with Lambert for the top spot in the Region 5-AAAAAAA standings, as the Eagles scored 86 points.

But Lambert put 95 points on the scoreboard to wrap up the top seed in the upcoming region tournament, with the Longhorns unbeaten in the region and 20-3 overall.

Lambert is one of a long string of Milton opponents this season with gaudy win-loss records, with 10 of the teams the Eagles have faced a combined 180-27 coming into this past weekend’s action. As a result of their demanding schedule, Milton is 9-13 on the season after losing to unbeaten and state No. 1 McEachern the night after its loss to Lambert.

The most recent obstacle for the Eagles to overcome was the involuntary departure at mid-season of coach Matt Kramer, who had re-established the Milton basketball program after predecessor David Boyd’s recruiting efforts cost him his job and left the team on probation for the 2012-13 season.

Milton won at least 17 games in all three of Kramer’s seasons as head coach, including a 23-9 mark in 2015-16. But Kramer was forced to step down from his position earlier in January, with veteran assistant Sean Revels taking over as head coach.

“They have adjusted well under all the adversity,” Revels said after the 95-86 loss to Lambert. “I’ve been in the program four years and have been able to provide some stability.”

Despite all the turmoil that results from a mid-season coaching change, especially at the high school level, the Eagles are guaranteed a spot in the state tournament, and can clinch home court advantage in the first round if they win their opening game in the region tournament, which will be played at Milton.

The Eagles enter the last week of the regular season 6-2 in region, and have locked up the No. 2 seed in the tournament. The top two finishers in the 6-team region receive first round byes, ensuring them a trip to state. A semifinal win would earn the Eagles a home game in the first round of the state playoffs and a third shot at Lambert, which scored a pair of tightly-contested victories over Milton less than a week apart.

The Longhorns got some help from the officiating crew in their most recent win over the Eagles. Lambert physically defended O’Connell the length of the floor, and drew two offensive fouls from the star Milton senior as he attempted to get his defender off him. O’Connell sat out much of the first half in foul trouble and played sparingly in the second half before a questionable technical foul sent him to the bench for the remainder of the game.

Lambert has held O’Connell to his two lowest scoring outputs of the season, limiting him to 11 in a 77-72 victory at Lambert and to 14 in the win at Milton. O’Connell is averaging 25 points a game, with a high of 49 against St. Francis, one of the many outstanding teams the Eagles have faced this season.

Revels says O’Connell “will be motivated” if the Eagles get a third crack at Lambert, and hopes he will be able to “rely on his skill set” and not get frustrated by the referees reluctance to call fouls, which he says has been the case in both games between the two teams.

O’Connell is capable of scoring from all over the floor, using his skill to work his way through double and triple-teams to get to the basket and his height to set up shots from closer range.

“Alex leads us and the rest of our players understand what their roles are,” Revels says, but as the Eagles proved for long stretches of Friday’s game, they have the ability to play with top teams even without their best player.

Milton, which erased a 14-point deficit in the third period in less than three minutes, got terrific performances from its young backcourt trio of Christian Wright, Jordan Yates and Donovan Hairston, who combined for 58 points against Lambert. The vast majority of those points came on fast break layups or determined drives to the basket, with Milton’s spread offense giving the team’s guards room to maneuver.

“We like to use our athleticism in space,” Revels says, and with O’Connell and his young trio of backcourt teammates, the Eagles can make things very difficult for defenses that are slow to get back on the fast break or struggle to stop penetration.

Revels says Wright has been “phenomenal” as a freshman, smoothly operating the offense as the Eagles’ point guard. He scored 18 points against Lambert. Yates, who started as a sophomore at quarterback for the Eagles’ football team, came off the bench against Lambert to score 25 points, repeatedly getting to the basket for contested layups that required considerable athleticism to complete.

Hairston, a sophomore, scored all 15 of his points in the second half, including the Eagles’ only 3-pointer of the game. Like Yates, Hairston came off the bench, with Milton also getting a big lift from McGhee, who made his inside presence felt on defense in the absence of O’Connell.

The Eagles reached four straight state finals under Boyd, winning two, with a team consisting primarily of high profile transfers. That was also true last year, with O’Connell and Chris Lewis, who is playing at Harvard this season, joined by three transfers, one of whom has returned to his former school.

Wright came to Milton from Holy Spirit Prep prior to his freshman season and Ulyric Linton, a junior who was in the starting lineup against Lambert, moved in from Texas.

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