New Madrid hoops opens season with defensive mindset, success

For those prep basketball followers throughout Missouri, who were curious if the New Madrid County Central boy’s squad would have any malaise hanging over it after winning the MSHSAA Class 3 state championship last spring, the Eagles have answered that question with an emphatic “No” just two games into this season.

New Madrid County Central dominated its own 28th Annual Riverbend Classic event over the weekend with an 80-63 win over West Memphis (Ark.) on Friday and a 74-44 victory against Horn Lake (Miss.) on Saturday.

As impressive as the Eagles (2-0) were in producing offensively, what should concern the opposition this season is the level of defensive pressure that New Madrid showed from the opening tip this weekend.

“(Former New Madrid Coach Lennies McFerren) was a defensive person,” first-year Eagle Coach Dontre Jenkins said following Saturday's win. “I kind of have gotten (my philosophy) off of him.”

Jenkins, who played for the Eagles, served as the top assistant to the legendary McFerren “for a long time,” and he explained that his program is taking a “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality to the Eagles’ defense.

“I know the defensive system,” Jenkins said. “He always preached defense. We have five returners, and they have been under ‘Coach Mac’ throughout their high school career, so we don’t need to change what they already know.”

In Friday’s game, New Madrid jumped out to a 25-14 lead in the opening quarter and never looked back.

On Saturday, after scoring the game’s initial eight points, the Eagles led Horn Lake 13-3 and eventually 26-14 in the opening period.

“Defense wins championships,” Jenkins said. “That is what we are fighting for.”

New Madrid took a 44-29 lead over Horn Lake into the second half and then nearly pitched a shutout in the third quarter, as it held the visitors to just two points.

Jenkins had his team work on different defensive scenarios throughout the contest. At times, the Eagles would pressure Horn Lake the length of the court while at other times New Madrid would drop back and pick up its opposition at the 10-second line.

In the second half, the Eagles even worked a little bit of zone defense into the game.

“Sometimes,” Jenkins explained, “we’ll face teams that are super athletic and want to get up and down the floor. We were practicing (the zone defense) and we may be in a bunch of shootouts (offensively), so we were trying to give them a little bit different feel for the game.”

As was the case on Saturday with West Memphis, Horn Lake had no defensive answers for Eagle seniors BJ Williamson and Jadis Jones.

Williamson buried five 3-pointers against Horn Lake and matched the 29 points that he had scored against West Memphis, to lead New Madrid on Saturday.

Jones, who has signed to play football at NCAA Division I Coastal Carolina, scored 24 points on Friday and hit 8 of 11 free throws to finish with 26 points on Saturday.

New Madrid senior guard AJ Ruff put in eight points with a couple of 3-pointers on Saturday while junior Ra’Mond Brooks chipped in six points in the victory.

“We have really good defensive potential,” Jenkins said of his first team as the head coach. “With the first five (players), you have three guys who played a lot of minutes on a state championship team.

“They know what is going on (defensively).”

New Madrid County Central will travel to the Marshal County (Ky.) Hoopfest on Saturday and play McCracken County on Saturday at 1:30 p.m.