2008 PLAYER/COACH OF THE YEAR : Title won with teamwork
Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2008
SILOAM SPRINGS — Jason McMahan and Coleson Rakestraw really had just one goal for the 2007-08 basketball season — win enough games to qualify for the state playoffs. They were driven by a near miss. Siloam Springs, a postseason observer every year since 1998, came painfully close to being a participant last year. The Panthers played Greenbrier at home in the final game of the regular season with a state tournament
berth going to the winner.
The Panthers lost 52-45.
Led by several returning
lettermen — and a blue-chip junior
prospect in Rakestraw — the
Panthers expected to at least be
good enough to be in a similar
position again this year. But even McMahan, the team’s
second-year head coach, couldn’t
fathom what was in store. “ I thought Coleson might lead
us to great things, ” he says. “ But a state championship ? I couldn’t tell you I thought that. That would probably be beyond my wildest dreams. I wish I had more faith. ” McMahan, Rakestraw and the rest of the Panthers did have plenty of belief in each other, though. Enough to surprise the state by winning the Class 5 A state championship, the first in the 100-year history of SSHS. For their efforts, Benton County Sunday today named McMahan its 2008 High School Boys’ Coach of the Year and Rakestraw the Player of the Year. Their season began with nine consecutive wins and culminated in Hot Springs with a convincing 61-40 victory against defending state champion Greene County Tech before 5, 271 fans inside Summit Arena. The Panthers made 43 three-pointers in four playoff games, thought to be a state tournament record though no official category for that statistic is kept by the Arkansas Activities Association. The catalyst for all of it was Rakestraw, a 6-foot-3 junior guard who played point guard for the Panthers but was hailed by some as the top shooter in the state. “ I’ll put a bet on him, ” Greene County Tech coach Scott Bowlin said after the championship game. “ And I’m not a betting man. ”
Rakestraw, a 4. 0 student and the younger brother of former Springdale Har-Ber guard and current Arkansas freshman basketball player Nate Rakestraw, set a school record for season scoring average at 21. 7 ppg. He also led the Panthers in FT percentage (88. 0 ), three-point percentage (47. 0 ) and made three-pointers (109 ).
He hit 9 three-pointers and scored 40 points in a tournament game in December in Neosho, Mo. He also hit 9 three-pointers and scored 39 points in a conference win against LR Christian in February, the Warriors’ only league loss.
“ It’s nothing we take credit for, ” McMahan jokes. “ It’s all him. He’s the whole package and he’s probably the smartest kid in the whole school in his class. ”
McMahan says there wasn’t a shot on the court he didn’t want Rakestraw to take, but getting him to do so was sometimes easier said than done.
“ We wanted him to shoot; anything he could get shoot it, ” McMahan says. “ But because he didn’t want the other kids to think he stood out or was selfish, he’d pass up shots he could’ve made. His biggest flaw was always how unselfish he was. ”
Rakestraw was named MVP of three different tournaments this season for the Panthers, including the state tournament after scoring 28 points in the title game.
“ It was amazing in Hot Springs, ” Rakestraw says. “ A feeling I’ve never been a part of. It seemed like it happened so fast. It was kind of unbelievable. ”
McMahan, formerly the junior high coach here, prided his team’s accomplishment on the fact that it played its best down the stretch. The Panthers, runners-up in the 5 A-West Conference, won 8 of their last 10 games and to finish the season 22-8. They won their four state tournament games by an average of 16 points per game.
McMahan, a Crossett native, came to Siloam Springs in 2000 after graduating from Mid-America Nazarene University in Oklahoma. He was hired to coach the junior high boys’ team and did so for five years with success.
He left for a year to coach in Oklahoma after being passed over the senior boys’ job. He spent the 2005-06 season as an assistant coach at Westmoore High in Oklahoma City.
When the Panthers’ job opened for a second time the following year, the school quickly snapped up McMahan. He says he’s fortunate to arrive here at the right time in history.
“ I always knew if it was gonna happen for us (to win a state title ) it would be with Coleson on our team, ” McMahan says. “ In basketball, if you’ve got the best guy, you’ve got a chance. I had hoped he’d be the best in our league but I had no idea about 5 A. He’s just so self-motivated and it’s a joy for me to have him one more year. ”
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