Lakewood Ranch uses one-for-all mentality to chase state championship

The phrases are repeated over and over before every high school basketball season, by every team.

No one is bigger than the team. Everyone contributes. Everyone is important.

The difference at Lakewood Ranch is that those sayings are true. The Mustangs prove it every game.

It was true last season when Lakewood Ranch won the Class 7A District 11 title, and this year in Class 8A, it remains the same.

Just ask them.

“We don’t care about ourselves,” senior Sam Hester said. “We do whatever it takes to win. That’s it. It seems like we have a new leading scorer almost every game. I like to see everyone else having success.”

Senior Devin Twenty believes the team would have had success before his junior season with better depth. Last season, they finally had it.

“We are growing,” Twenty said. “We just keep getting better and better.”

Coach Jeremy Schiller is aware his athletes are special.

“We don’t have 11 good players,” Schiller said. “We have 11 great players.”

That level of depth would seemingly make finding minutes for everyone difficult, but Schiller said otherwise. It’s about effort, he said. Minutes are earned in practice, they are not given. His players understand it, and perform accordingly.

“There are no bad attitudes on the team,” Schiller said. “Everyone is excited. They’re just great kids and they’re invested. They don’t ever miss practice or weights. It’s become a culture.”

Nine of the team’s 11 athletes played together in some form prior to joining the Mustangs. It is that bond that led to the elevation of Lakewood Ranch basketball to a feared program.

The Mustangs won six games the year before the current senior class arrived, Schiller said. Then twelve, when Hester, Twenty and Justin Muscara all made the varsity team as freshmen. That trio’s sophomore year, when they were joined by classmates Blauvelt Georges, Brock Sisson and Kodey Elliot, plus incoming freshmen Damien Gordon, the team exploded for 21 wins. Last season, juniors Jackson Kelley and Evan Spiller joined varsity as a sophomore. The depth created in such a short time, plus the high level of experience for such a young team, led to the program’s first district title in 11 years. The players know how special the current team can be, and are thankful that they are able to go on one final journey to the top of the high school basketball mountain together.

“There’s nothing better than winning with the people you care about,” Hester said.

“I wouldn’t even call us all friends,” Muscara added. “We’re brothers. We literally have grown up together. We made this program.”

Before Schiller arrived at the school in 2011, Lakewood Ranch was a place where kids went to school, and they “ended up playing basketball,” he said. One of his goals when hired was to transform the program into a school where basketball players wanted to be.

To do that, the program had to undergo some changes from the top down. Schiller was going to run a tight ship in order to change the culture. He told the incumbent senior class of Brian Cobb, Zach Ainge and Winston Bridges that they would have to make sacrifices for the good of the program. In return, he told them, he would make sure they receive championship rings when Lakewood Ranch wins a state title.

No state title just yet, but Schiller has indeed accomplished that initial goal. Players are now choosing to be Mustangs.

Senior Cameron Lindblad transferred to Lakewood Ranch as a sophomore from a high school in Illinois. Before Lindblad made a final decision on a school, Schiller told him the deal: The program is filled with young, talented players already. You can come, but there’s no guarantee you’ll ever play significant minutes. Be ready to compete.

Lindblad was not scared away.

He’s now getting important minutes for a state title-contending team.

The other Mustang who did not play travel ball with the rest of his teammates is Sam Jackson. That’s because Jackson didn’t play basketball growing up. He played football at left tackle, and he was really good at it. The 6-foot-6, 332 pound Jackson is committed to the University of Central Florida next season. Schiller and the Lakewood Ranch football staff thought basketball would help Jackson gain quickness and conditioning, since the two games are so different, and last season they convinced him to play. Schiller actually tried to get Jackson to play previously, but Jackson declined.

“You’re going to regret not doing it sooner,” Schiller told Jackson.

Jackson now admits that Schiller was right. Jackson, too, gets key minutes. Against Braden River on Dec. 9, he had six points, the same amount as Hester.

In fact, every single Mustang scored at least six points against the Pirates, an 82-54 home win.

That is incredible balance, and something that teams with less depth are going to struggle with when playing Lakewood Ranch.

Off the court, the team is constantly loose, unless it’s time for practice. Even during games, the players on the bench react to each made shot as if it were their own, leaping out of their chair and pumping their fists in the air. Twenty controls the locker room and practice music, but said he gets requests from a lot of the guys about what to play. It’s mostly hip-hop and rap, but only because Twenty would never hear the end of it if he played country music, which Twenty says “gets [him] in the mood.”

Every great team has nicknames, and the Mustangs are no different. Most of them have no explanation. Jackson is known as ‘Big Show,’ named by some of the team’s resident wrestling fans. Spiller is ‘E. Dougie.’ Hester is ‘Whopper.’ Gordon is ‘Diego.’

Muscara said the jovial nature of the team has even managed to wear down its coach’s defenses.

“He used to be a lot more strict,” Muscara said of Schiller. “Now he laughs at all the boy stuff we do.”

The Mustangs are fun, no doubt about it. The only thing left to see is how far they can go.

Hester said the team is more mature on the court and doesn’t make as many mistakes. Jackson thinks the team has a better grip on the offense.

“We still don’t know how good we can be,” Schiller said. “We’re not a finished project.”

That project won’t be complete until all 11 of the players, the brothers, are wearing championship rings.