The B.E.S.T. Academy (25-7) basketball team went to the GHSA A Division I Boys Basketball State Championship game with an eight-man roster to play Southwest Macon (27-3) in their hometown at the Macon Coliseum and came out victorious, celebrating a 62-57 win and raising the school’s first-ever championship trophy.
“It means a lot,” B.E.S.T. Academy head basketball coach Brian Weeden said. “It’s a monumental moment. Our fans, faculty, staff, and all the kids that supported us, I cannot thank them enough.”
B.E.S.T. Academy’s early lead in the first quarter didn’t last very long. Southwest outscored the Eagles in both the second and third quarters and had a 45-37 lead entering the last eight minutes of the season.
But the Eagles’ defense stepped up in the final quarter, forcing turnovers and scoring in transition to start an amazing comeback. B.E.S.T. Academy scored 25 points in the fourth quarter to complete the comeback and pull off the upset in front of a packed arena.
“We just told our guys to keep doing the work,” Weeden said. “We’ve been facing adversity all year, and that just fuels us.”
Three players for B.E.S.T. Academy finished with double-digits in scoring, and Joshua Mickell led the team with 16 points in the championship game.
Jacob Mickell (15 points,9 rebounds), Nicholas Dozier (14 points, 9 rebounds), and Alexander Barrett (8 points, 9 rebounds) were all just shy of recording double-doubles in the game.
B.E.S.T. Academy, which opened in 2010, is bringing home its first championship trophy in any sport. Despite being a smaller school, its support system traveled down to Macon to cheer them on and celebrate the win.
“When you think about what the culture is and what the athletes went through to get to this point, it means a lot,” B.E.S.T. Academy athletic director Joshua Moore said. “That game was a microcosm of how they’ve been all season. They play to the end.”
B.E.S.T. Academy wasn’t the only APS basketball program to make a deep run into the state playoffs. The 2023-2024 state champion Maynard Jackson High School girls basketball team returned to the AAAA state championship game, and the Benjamin E. Mays High School boys basketball team reached the AAAA state quarterfinals.
The B.E.S.T. Academy Eagles 2024-2025 Roster
1 Xion Evans
4 Jacob Mickell
10 Nicholas Dozier
11 Alexander Barrett
14 Mario Lemons
15 Joshua Mickell
21 Wendell Brown Jr
25 Curtis Martin
Managers:
ZaMya Wallace
Taylor Roach’e
Athletic Trainer
Lance Parrish
Coaches:
Brian Weeden
Mario Lemons
Damian Goodwin
Jessica Johnson
Jordan Price
Jordan Lemons
Tahj Shamsid-Deen