Mike Carrabine wasn’t losing his voice – yet.

But his phone steadily rang and beeped with incoming text messages Saturday afternoon, minutes after his Fort Bend Dulles boys basketball team defeated Madison 70-62 to clinch the school’s first-ever state tournament berth.

“I’m not gonna get tired of talking,” he told his assistant coaches as he boarded the team bus outside the Aldine Campbell Center.

The Vikings (33-4) seek to obtain full area bragging rights Friday afternoon when they play Klein Forest (33-3), the Region II champions, in the 3:30 p.m. semifinal at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin.

North Crowley (36-1) plays San Antonio Madison (33-7), the only returning team in the field, in the other semifinal at 8:30 p.m.

Scouting Klein Forest may be easier than other teams for Dulles, mostly because the Vikings and Golden Eagles are so similar.

Klein Forest hit 15 3-pointers in its regional semifinal win, and only one in the final, which it won 76-75.

The Eagles, who ousted powerful Klein Collins from the tournament, boast three large-school signees. Chris Hines is headed to Utah, Toure Murry to Wichita State and Elliott Lloyd to Northern Colorado.

“They’re guard-oriented to an extreme. The teams we’ve been playing – Madison was guard-oriented, but a lot of the teams are in our district (23-5A) are big,” Carrabine said. “They really look like us. They’re quick, and they’re all guards. So the matchup’s pretty good – on paper.”

Here’s another similarity: Klein Forest doesn’t have a player taller than 6-4. Neither does Dulles.

One of the only Dulles teams in recent memory to buck that trend was the team that had the best shot to make state before this. The 1998-99 team whose chance at a state berth was yanked from them when Beaumont Ozen defeated them on a nearly-full court heave in the regional final featured several players taller than 6-foot-5, including one who stood 6-9.

“We haven’t had any size in a long time,” Carrabine said. “We were 27-10 last year and made the playoffs and we were very small. We haven’t had any size to speak of really in four or five years. I don’t know what it is.”

North Crowley, ranked No. 6 in the latest National Prep Basketball Poll, eliminated defending 5A champion Duncanville in the regional semifinal and thrashed Midland Lee 111-57 in the regional final. Senior guard Willie Warren, a 6-foot-4, 195-pound Oklahoma commit and McDonald’s All-American, scored a career-high and school-record 47 points.

Twelve players scored and 14 players got at least one rebound for North Crowley, which brings a 33-game win streak to Austin.

Madison is back at state despite losing two standouts to graduation and a third to a season-ending knee injury. They defeated Converse Wagner 62-59 in the regional final behind a rarely-used zone defense and Roshun Jackson, who exploded in the second half to score 16 points.

Jackson, a Texas State signee, averages a team-high 19 points.

BOYS BASKETBALL STATE TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE
at Frank Erwin Center, Austin
5A Semifinals
Fort Bend Dulles (33-4) vs. Klein Forest (33-3), 3:30 p.m.
North Crowley (36-1) vs. San Antonio Madison (33-7), 8:30 p.m.
5A Championship
Semifinal winners, 8:30 p.m. (TV: KNWS-Ch. 51 in Houston area; FSN Southwest on satellite and outside Houston market)

Subscribe to this comment's feed