Isaac Williams, Oak Cliff Faith Family completes Texas high school state basketball three-peat
SAN ANTONIO, Texas - Oak Cliff Faith Family Academy was ready for a third straight Texas (UIL) Class 4A state championship.
In fact, the hats with the phrase "three-peat" were already on the floor and being handed out to players just moments after the clock hit zeros in the Eagles’ 80-66 win over Silsbee on Saturday at the Alamodome.
The Eagles are one of six teams in Texas boys high school history to win three in a row, a fact Coach Brandon Thomas praised in the postgame press conference.
The team had only one starter from last year’s state championship team back on the floor on Saturday — Jazz Henderson.
Last year, Isaac Williams was injured and he made his return this year and earned MVP honors for the Eagles by scoring 32 points, going a perfect 14-for-14 from the field. He added six rebounds and four assists as well.
“I was locked in from the beginning,” the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi signee said. “It meant a lot; I was injured last year and I wanted to show everyone in Texas I could do that.”
Williams, a 6-foot-2 guard, outscored Silsbee (29-10) himself in the first quarter, 15-9 — and Oak Cliff Faith Family led 22-9 after the opening 8 minutes. The Eagle shot 76.9% from the field in the first quarter.
At one point in the second quarter, the Eagles led 39-20 and Williams had 19 points himself.
At the break, Faith Family led 44-22.
The advantage grew to as many as 29 points in the fourth quarter for the Dallas school. Silsbee made a run late — 11-0 — to trim the deficit to 12 following a layup by Memphis signee Jared Harris, who had a team-high 21 points.
Silsbee had three in double figures with Payton Jones adding 15 and Troy Rice scoring 10.
Doryan Onwuchekwa was the only other Faith Family player in double figures, recording a double-double with 19 points and 14 rebounds coming in off the bench. The 6-foot-10 senior recently de-committed from Colorado.
The victory capped off a 13-game winning streak to close the season for Oak Cliff Faith Family, which finished 25-11 this season.
With a travel itinerary that featured trips to Tennessee, Ohio, California, Kentucky and the Bahamas, Faith Family was tested. Of the 11 losses, only two came to Texas teams: iSchool of Lewisville and Austin Lake Travis. Most others were to nationally-ranked teams.
“When I say this, I’m not trying to be negative in any way, that group could possibly play with a lot of JUCOs, they really could,” Silsbee coach Joe Sigler said of Faith Family. “I’m not trying to make any excuses. That is a very good team and that we wanted to play, get that straight. We’ve had the chance to play them twice in the state tournament. Whenever we go up against them we wanted to see if we can compete against that. We had an opportunity to play against them like that in a state championship game. On this day, we needed to put together four quarters against a team like that and we got two. That isn’t good enough for a team like that."
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PHOTO GALLERY
All photos by Tommy Hays.
Photo by Tommy Hays, SBLive Sports
-- Cody Thorn | @sblivetx
