Jim Mashek

DRAGONS WILL SQUARE OFF WITH RESILIENT ASHLAND BLAZER ON FRIDAY’s QUARTERFINALS

LEXINGTON — Warren Central High School’s No. 1-ranked boys basketball team projected a laid-back vibe in Day Two of the KHSAA Sweet 16 Tournament on Thursday evening, with its day off before Friday’s quarterfinals at Rupp Arena.

The Dragons, sporting an amazing 33-1 record, square off with a rugged, resilient Ashland Blazer High School squad in the second semifinal on Friday. The opening game, scheduled for an 11 a.m. EDT start, pits Elizabethtown (24-9) and Woodford County (21-12).

Veteran Warren Central head coach William Unseld and his squad turned out at Rupp for the night session in first-round games Thursday, with Lexington’s Frederick Douglass High School crushing Martin County 73-53 before defending Sweet 16 champion George Rogers Clark High School took the floor against North Laurel in the nightcap.

“We feel great that we’re playing again (Friday),” Unseld said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Unseld and his squad practiced on Thursday afternoon, for 90 minutes or so, and Unseld will make sure they get sufficient rest before tangling with the Ashland Blazer Tomcats on Friday.

LolThere will be anywhere up to 10,000 high school basketball fans — the game with Pulaski County drew a paid crowd of 9,009 — on hand to see how the lauded Dragons and the underdogs from Boyd County, located on the south side of the Ohio River west of Cincinnati.

“The coaches take our cell phones at a certain time every time we’re on a road trip like this,” Warren Central point guard Izayiah Villafuerte said.

Villafuerte said the Dragons stay four athletes to a hotel room, and he’s roomed with Kade Unseld, the son of the WCHS head coach, and Malik Jefferson this season, along with freshman guard Johan Pratt, which is by design.

Villafeurte and Jefferson are seniors, and Kade Unseld was here last year as the team’s sixth man. William Unseld believes in building a winning culture, with the older players setting the example for their younger teammates.

The 6-foot-8 William Unseld was sprawled over a couple seats on an aisle seat in the upper rows of Section 34 at Rupp Arena on Thursday, while Villafuerte and several of his teammates wandered around the concourse in search of the arena’s famed soft-serve ice cream.

William Unseld is coaching a veteran group, including eight or nine guys who were on hand for last year’s amazing run to the KHSAA Sweet Sixteen championship game.

“They’ve been focused on the mission at hand,” Unseld said.

The mission took shape after last year’s Sweet Sixteen title tilt, when George Rogers Clark enjoyed a significant logistical advantage over Warren Central on Championship Saturday.

George Rogers Clark slipped past Lincoln County, 54-51, in the first semifinal last year. Warren Central then took the court against Covington Catholic, and 6-foot-5 Chappelle Whitney scored 21 points to power the Dragons past Cov Cath, 61-58.

Unseld hurried his squad out of the arena and back to the team hotel after that game, to get his players off their feet, a quick meal and maybe a catnap before returning to Rupp Arena for the highly anticipated championship game.

That’s the format the KHSAA has used for some time, but all things being equal, a Sunday championship game makes a lot more sense, from a competition standpoint.

As fate would have it, the Dragons would play in the opening semifinal on Saturday, provided they can take care of business against Ashland Blazer. The Tomcats pulled off a remarkable comeback in the final first-round game played on Wednesday night, used Braxton Jennings’ 3-pointer with about 15 seconds left to slip past Owensboro High School, 66-65.

Don’t bother bringing up this sort of nuance, however, with Warren Central’s William Unseld. The personable 6-foot-8 coach is in communications with Bowling Green Municipal Utilities for 20 years, so he knows how to control the message.

Unseld was a little irked, for instance, when the Dragons finished off Pulaski County in their first-round game Wednesday night.

After striking quickly for a 20-3 lead after the opening quarter, Warren Central seemed to let up on the accelerator, just a bit, even though the game was never in doubt. Pulaski never got closer than 20 points of the lead in the second half, but Unseld saw enough to give him some material for Thursday morning’s film session with his players.

“You can’t play the score, you play the game,” he said. “Great teams don’t relax.”

If that sounds like William Unseld is grading on a pretty tough curve, you’re absolutely right. That’s what he’s done with a veteran team such as the 2022-23 Warren Central squad.

Unseld put together a schedule as challenging as he possibly could, including holiday tournament play. He told me in November that he “didn’t want to go undefeated,” perhaps in anticipation of the Dragons making another run at a state championship.

Unseld’s contention, and I would agree, is that Warren Central’s student-athletes didn’t need an added burden of an undefeated team pursuing its second state championship in school history. Unseld was toiling as a middle school coach, when Tim Riley took the Dragons to the promised land in 2004,

No one had to tell William Unseld that we haven’t had a KHSAA Sweet Sixteen state champion with an unblemished record in 75 years.

That’s right, 75 years.

Now-defunct Brewers High School, located in Marshall County — in the Jackson Purchase area of the Commonwealth — went a perfect 36-0 while winning the Sweet Sixteen in 1948.

So when Mason County knocked off Warren Central, 60-43, in a holiday tournament on December 27 at Lexington Catholic High School, Unseld didn’t sweat it.

His players didn’t sweat it.

All their goals were out there, all their goals were still in front of them.

And they got back to winning.

“For our seniors, this is their last go-round,” Unseld said. “They’ve taken it to heart.”

Those seniors, in alphabetical order, are Demetrius Bennett, Omari Glover, Malik Jefferson, Izayiah Villafuerte, Damarion Walkup, Tayvion Wells and Chappelle Whitney.

You might say these guys know a thing or two about winning, but Glover and Bennett have experienced plenty of the alternative, on the football field, something the Dragons finally vanquished on Opening Night last August.

Warren Central had not won a football game since October 16, 2015, when the Dragons stopped crosstown rival Warren East 23-12 at Joe Hood Field, located on the back of the WCHS campus.

Warren Central had accrued a gut-wrenching 61-game losing streak, but Glover, their best receiver and a terrific all-around player on the basketball court, told me he never gave any thought to concentrating on basketball. These guys were serious about ending seven years of sheer frustation under second-year WCHS head football coach Mark Nelson.

So on opening night, in the intense heat of Shepherdsville, Kentucky, the Dragons traveled two hours or so to Bullitt County. And they came home 13-0 winners over Bullitt Central, a Class 6A squad. (Warren Central was Class 4A at the time.

Once the pressure was off, the Dragons could learn a thing or two about winning.

Nelson guided Warren Central to a 5-5 finish in the regular season, an amazing accomplishment, if you ask me, and I covered their first-round KHSAA Class 4A playoff game against Madisonville-North Hopkins. Madisonville would win that contest, 39-12, but it was anybody’s game through three quarters.

I thought it was the best story in South Central Kentucky, last football season, at least until tradition-rich Bowling Green High School returned to the KHSAA Class 5A championship game. Lexington’s Frederick Douglass High School stopped the Purples, 28-7, at the University of Kentucky’s Kroger Field.

Glover and Barnett have brought a certain toughness to the 2022-23 Warren Central boys basketball team, and the Dragons were already motivated, anyway, after dropping a 43-42 decision to George Rogers Clark in last year’s Sweet 16 championship game.

It’s given Izayiah Villafuerte food for thought, going into his final few days as a high school basketball player. Villafuerte was at the free-throw line one year ago, almost to the day, when he split on a pair of free throws with 3.2 seconds left, allowing George Rogers Clark to escape with the victory.

This team has a laser focus, going all the way back to that runner-up finish here at Rupp Arena one year ago.

“This team just enjoys playing together,” Villafuerte said. “Embrace the moment, never look too far ahead. After the season’s over, we’re never going to play together, as a team, again.

“This team is so close. We do everything together. Watch college basketball, maybe the movies, anything … We’re like brothers. It’s been an amazing experience.”