Sure, Jett Montgomery is the name you first think of when somebody mentions Independence boys’ basketball.
But he has a band of brothers who will all get championship rings right alongside him very soon.
The Eagles won their first state basketball title in school history on Saturday, downing upstart Cookeville 53-44 in the final at MTSU’s Murphy Center, and while Montgomery’s 28 points led all scorers and earned him Most Valuable Player honors, his supporting cast did plenty of heavy lifting.
“This brotherhood that we’ve made over the last four years, I’ve never seen such a team before,” Montgomery said. “People throw around the term ‘team,’ but this was a team. There was no selfishness. If (Wilkins) asked somebody to do something, if it was one of the coaches or us or the bench players, we did it. It just means so much more because of the journey it took.”
Much like in Friday’s semifinal win over Rossview, senior Korben Walling worked inside for some tough buckets early on, grinding his way to 10 points and All-Tournament Team honors. Tylan Lewis made his presence known in the second quarter, chipping in key points when Cookeville threatened to extend a small lead, scoring seven points in total and also landing on the All-Tournament team.
Perhaps the most important points came from Houston Hicks with 2:45 left, as the Cavaliers had cut a nine-point Indy lead down to four. Lewis had found Hicks wide open in the corner and the Eagles’ bench erupted behind him seconds later as his three-pointer stabilized things for the stretch run. Those were Hicks’ only points of the contest, but he did add 11 rebounds and two blocks, which netted him All-Tournament honors as well.
“I mean, I was wide open,” Hicks said. “Nobody was guarding me. I had to shoot. (Head coach Mark Wilkins) would have gotten more mad if I didn’t shoot.”
And Montgomery had a “Jett game,” as the Mr. Basketball finalist and Southern Miss signee made three 3-pointers and hit all 11 free throw attempts to cap a high school career that Independence folks will remember for a very long time.
“I’m never thinking about (playing loose),” Montgomery said, “but I remember (assistant coach Jeremy Whaley) after (Friday’s semifinals) said ‘you’ve been playing great, but we haven’t had a ‘Jett game’ in a while.’”
It’s why Wilkins was able to simply steer the ship – he knew the type of crew working on the voyage to redeem themselves after last year’s runner-up finish.
“It’s just like if we ever have a team to get there to the state tournament and you bring enough back (the next season), maybe you can win it the next year,” Wilkins said. “Lo and behold, we won two games last year and we’re sitting there in the state championship game thinking we were wrong and we should win it while we’re here. We came up short and that definitely stung, but our kids – to their credit – came back to work even faster than I did.”
Lewis is the only one of the quartet returning next season, but
“We’ve got a group of underclassmen that look up to these guys,” Lewis said, “and they’ll come in and bring the same work ethic that this group did.
They’ll have some big shoes to fill, and not just from one player, either.