Dillard boys’ basketball ends Doral’s 50-game win streak to reach state semis

A Miami-Dade County winning streak that had reached 50 consecutive games came to a crushing end on Friday night for the Doral Academy boys’ basketball team.

The Dillard Panthers, a program steeped deep in winning tradition with seven state titles including two in the last three years, stepped into a standing-room-only and noisy Firebirds gym and never blinked.

Dillard jumped out to an 11-0 lead and never looked back en route to a 41-29 victory over Doral in a Region 4-7A final. It brought an end to a winning streak that dated back to a 56-37 loss to SLAM Academy on Dec. 20, 2017.

It also ended Doral’s hopes of repeating as Class 7A state champions. Instead, the Panthers, a team that finished as district runners-up and won all three regional playoff games on the road, are heading back to Lakeland for the 13th time.

Dillard (20-6) will square off against Tampa Hillsborough in a state semifinal at noon Friday at the George Jenkins Center in Lakeland.

“This Doral team had us really nervous. To play a team that had not lost a game in a year and a half, we knew we would need to come in here and play really well tonight,” said Dillard head coach Darryl Burrows who took over the program in 1993 and will make his 11th trip to state. “We couldn’t allow them to get a lot of good open looks because that’s where they can really do their damage and we just had to work hard to deny them those looks and we really did a great job of that.”

That’s exactly what happened as the Firebirds, a team that relies heavily on perimeter shooting with Devin Carter leading the way, were ice cold all night long. That had a lot to do with a tenacious Dillard defense and the Panthers two bigs underneath, Makerere Williams and Jalen Haynes. Not only did they patrol the middle, allowing Doral (29-1) zero opportunities inside, but also came out with long arms altering many outside shots as well.

Even when the Firebirds had a few open looks, nothing fell. Doral, incredibly, made just three of its first 32 shots from the floor through the end of the third quarter.

Carter, who carried his team three nights earlier with a 30-point performance in a win over Belen, could do nothing on this night. He missed 15 of his first 16 shots before hitting a meaningless desperation three pointer with less than 10 seconds left, finishing with 11 points.

“Basically we knew that No. 22 (Carter) and No. 2 (Jonathan Nunez) score 80 percent of the time so our plan was to try and take away their shots and try and make the others shoot and it worked really well,” said Williams, who led all scorers with 12 points while pulling down eight boards and blocking three shots as well. “It’s easier said than done but we found a way.”

Doral trailed 21-8 at halftime, but thanks to some tenacious defense of its own held Dillard to just one point in the third quarter, cutting the Panther lead to 22-17 going to the final frame. When Nunez buried another one of his rainbow three pointers early in the fourth, the deficit was down to four at 24-20

The Panthers then went on an 11-1 run, ending the issue with a roaring alley-oop slam dunk and foul for an “and-one” by Williams to make it 35-21 with 2:21 left.

“It was a great run and I’m really proud of our kids for how hard they’ve worked during this entire run,” said Doral coach Jorge Fernandez. “Tonight you had to give all the credit to Dillard and Coach Burrows. He’s a great coach with multiple state championships and they just came in here and simply outplayed us and deserve to be moving on.”

After dropping its district championship game to Boyd Anderson, Dillard went on the road and won by one point in overtime over Okeechobee, beat BA by four in the rematch in the Cobras gym and then ended a Doral winning streak that was one win away from tying for second place all-time in the state of Florida with Melbourne Florida Air Academy’s 51 from 2004-06.

“Really something,” said Burrows shaking his head from side to side. “Doing something like this on the road is tough and takes a lot of heart and character. That’s what these kids have shown the last few weeks.”