Century club
Yates can break its own mark of consecutive 100-point games
Afree throw to extend a late third-quarter lead to 100-54 sounds like the kind of anticlimactic drubbing an oftenboisterous Yates basketball crowd is used to — except last Friday night.
The cheers could be heard from Barnett Fieldhouse to Scott Street.
Often trying to one-up themselves through gaudy victory margins, the Lions are one game away from another milestone.
Yates has scored 100 points or more in 15 consecutive games, tying its own national record from 2009-10. The Lions can make it 16 against Scarborough at 7 p.m. Tuesday at The Pavilion. They scored 118 against Scarborough on Jan. 18.
If the roars from the crowd after Friday’s 125-70 win over Wheatley didn’t provide enough indication, then the roars from the Yates locker room afterward should have.
This streak matters. Yates’ 2009-10 team transcended the sport and seemed untouchable in every way until now.
“That’s the team everyone talks about, team of the decade,” Yates senior guard Rubin Jones said after Friday’s win. “Everybody always compares us to them.
“As soon as we got the transfers, that’s the first thing they said.”
The transfers are what Wheatley coach and former Yates assistant Lonnie Reynolds Jr. said makes the current Lions different, even though there is potential to be great like the 2009-10 outfit.
The 2009-10 group had been together for years. This Yates team was injected with a few high-profile transfers who add another dimension to the
Lions’ high-flying style.
Some may scorn the transfers, and a Yates program no stranger to criticism would be used to it.
But these transfers mostly have gone off without a hitch. Guard Elijah Elliott transferred from St. Thomas with little problem. He’s the only new face who’s suited up since the season opener against Morton Ranch.
Chuks Isitua and Allen Udemadu — 6-10 and 6-9, respectively — bring size and athleticism that fits perfectly with Yates’ famous full-court press and high-flying fastbreaks. The former homeschoolers did not get cleared until mid-December with some of the delay coming from waiting on a date to get in front of the district executive committee, which rules on transfers.
Gerald Doakes, a heralded 6-3 point guard formerly of Milby and Pro-Vision Academy, might have made Yates even more dangerous, but his appeal to become eligible recently was denied because the move was within HISD, and the UIL’s intra-district transfer rule says a student is not eligible for varsity athletic competition until he or she has regularly attended that school for at least the previous calendar year.
Still, the transfers are huge, and Yates coach Greg Wise said it doesn’t work without the mainstays unselfishly allowing it to.
“They were the ones that had to accept them in the first place,” Wise said. “Rubin, (Antwon Norman) and Daryl Brown, all three of them actually went above and beyond to accept them and make them feel comfortable. It was easy.”
A little weary on waiting to be cleared at first, Udemadu concurs with Wise on the Yates veterans’ open arms.
“I remember the first game, just a whole lot of support,” Udemadu said. “They were just trying to get me going because I hadn’t played in a while. Starting to play with them, it just made me go, ‘Yeah, I can do this,’ because I started losing my trust in knowing what I could do for a while because I hadn’t played.”
There might be a little more pride in breaking the 2009-10 team’s streak considering the current Yates team would be doing so
with two regular season games to spare. Yates didn’t set the record in 2010 until the state semifinals.
Yates guard Latrell Moore, who was part of the program as a freshman before transferring to Willowridge and then returning to Yates, contributed to the current streak on Jan. 29 against Furr when his late 3pointer put Yates at 100 against a running clock instituted by a Houston ISD rule. The 2009-10 team also had a few wins during its streak where it barely made the century mark or were only a few points above it. But its high during that run was 154 points, which didn’t even top the famous 170-point game, the overall high for that season.
The current Yates team isn’t facing the vitriol the 2009-10 team saw, either. There isn’t an ESPN column headlined “Someone stop this man” in criticism of Wise and the Lions this time.
It might be a product of the basketball world becoming accustomed to lopsided wins from the Lions. And perhaps there always will be some ire around the program and the way it plays and wins. Wise says he hasn’t heard any pushback this time nor does he seek it. He remains steadfast, saying he’ll always “do what’s best for us.”
Wise notes Yates has been on the other side of lopsided affairs, too. Look no further than the Lions’ last
loss on Nov. 30, 2019 — a 98-46 defeat to Florida private school power Montverde Academy.
Yates’ roster was a different makeup at the time but even then, Wise taps into a general rule that says if you can dish it, you can take it.
“If they would’ve asked to run the clock I would’ve said, ‘No, we’re going to take this and learn from it,’” Wise said regarding the loss to Montverde.
Six years is probably six years too long of a state title drought for Yates. The Lions weren’t far off last year, losing to eventual state champion Oak Cliff Faith Family in the semifinals. Wise noted that Faith Family outrebounded Yates 40-27 in that game. The size advantage for Yates, which it’s had in some years past, will help if crashing the boards is going to matter in March, which it will.
The big picture isn’t lost with this team.
“It means a lot to most of the guys and the crowd,” Norman said of the streak after the win over Wheatley. “Me, I’m not really just worried about it. I’m just trying to get ready for the state championship.
“But it’ll be good if we get it, though.”