LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – So, what does Andre Chevalier do for an encore?
Chevalier capped a remarkable first season as the head coach of the Sierra Canyon High basketball program Sunday night, guiding the Trailblazers to a State CIF Open Division championship victory over Sacramento Sheldon in the Sacramento Kings’ in Golden 1 Center.
Sierra Canyon not only navigated its way through the post-season landscapes that are the CIF Southern Section’s and Regional Open Division playoff fields but did so with a completely revamped roster from the 2016-17 season.
Every key player that Chevalier used was part of a different high school program last season.
And to win a state title in California – on the highest level of competition – under those circumstances is – from what I can recall – unprecedented.
Sure, Chevalier had a marvelously gifted starting lineup of Ohio State-bound guard Duane Washington Jr., along with juniors Scotty Pippen Jr., Kenyon Martin Jr. and Cassius Stanley as well as sophomore Terren Frank.
But a lot of coaches have rosters with a lot of future college players but come up short in title runs.
That’s because they can’t put the players into position (at both ends of the court) to be as successful as possible or can’t find a way to blend a group of players used to a lot of individual success and aspiring to individual goals into a team with common aspirations.
Chevalier was able to do that to the nth degree.
And the progress his squad was making almost game-to-game from December and January – when they lost winnable games against outstanding teams (Phoenix Shadow Mountain, Las Vegas Bishop Gorman and Torrance Bishop Gorman), in large part because of poor shot selections at key moments in crunch time – until Saturday night bordered on the stunning.
The Trailblazers finished 27-4, with the losses coming only to the state champions from Arizona (Shadow Mountain) and Nevada (Bishop Gorman), as well as Bishop Montgomery (which they later beat twice, in overtime, during the sectional and regional semifinals) and Mater Dei (in the sectional final on March 2).
Nine of those wins came against teams ranked in the final BurlisonOnBasketball Top 10 Plus 15.
And that’s why Chevalier is the easy choice as the BurlisonOnBasketball top coach for the 2017-18 season.
The runners-up (listed alphabetically) are Ed Azzam (Westchester), Josh Beaty (Crean Lutheran), Matt Dunn (St. John Bosco), Dennis Latimore (Chino Hills) and James Mosley (Santa Clarita Christian).
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