Clarendon boys repeat at state

Penigar tallies 41 in title game Clarendon repeats at state

By DAVE WOHLFARTH

With his team trailing by eight points at halftime of last spring’s Class 2A state championship game, Clarendon Coach Boston Hudson wanted to get LaMarcus Peniger more involved in the offense.

But something else had to happen first.

Peniger had scored only eight points and sat on the bench for about 10 minutes in the second quarter because he had picked up two fouls. When he re-entered the game, he got his third foul with less than two minutes left in the half.

Lipan led the Broncos 24-16 at intermission.

“I felt we were almost playing not to lose,” Hudson said.

He pointed out that eight of Lipan’s 11 first-half field goals came as a result of points off offensive rebounds.

There was an urgent need for the Broncos to rebound.

“And the things that we do really well, like getting out in transition, we talked about,” Hudson said. “Well, if you don’t get the rebound, there is no transition. So we did that and got out, and got LaMarcus in space, and he took off.”

He did indeed.

The 5-9 senior guard fired in five 3-pointers in the third quarter, and the Broncos led by 12 entering the final period. Peniger finished the game with 41 points, connecting on 14 of 20 field goal attempts, including six of 10 on 3-pointers.

“I was just taking anything that was given me,” Peniger said. “At first, they were giving me mid-ranges. And then they were letting me shoot. Then they started face guarding me.”

Lipan’s defensive attempts were futile. Peniger was on fire, scorching the nets for 33 points in the second half.

After the 65-51 Clarendon victory, his thought on his performance was: “I couldn’t believe it.”

But Hudson could believe it because Peniger had a penchant for big-point explosions.

“In the last two years, he’s had 30-, 35-point games. Now never 41, but still 35 points in a 32-minute game, that’s a lot of points,” Hudson said.

“He’s fully capable of going by you because he’s just that quick. One thing about LaMarcus is he gets his shot off so fast. Where some other people were kind of amazed at what he did, he had done that two or three times this year.”

Peniger put it this way: “I been doing that this whole season. Nobody ever spoke on it.” (Continued on next page)

Head Coach Boston Hudson, left, and Assistant Coach Alton Gaines, right, join Jmaury Davis, LaMarcus Peniger, Cayden D’Costa and Jordan Henan, members of the 2021-22 Clarendon state championship team. (Photo by Cathy Martindale)

But Peniger had his cold nights, too. Steady Jmaury Davis, Clarendon’s 6-2 junior forward, actually led the team in scoring, averaging 20 points a game to Peniger’s 19. Peniger basically served as the point guard, averaging 5 assists and 3-4 steals per game. Davis led the Broncos in rebounds (6.5 rpg) and blocked shots (2-3 per game). “You know, night in and night out, JD (Davis) was the best player,” Hudson said. “I didn’t see everybody in the state, but Jmaury is probably the best 2A player in the state.”

Sixth back-to-back titlists

Clarendon, though, certainly had more weapons than those two guns as it became the sixth Texas boys team to win back-to-back state championships. Canadian (2014-15) was the last to repeat. The Broncos started the season with four starters and five other letter winners back from their 2021 title team. In addition to Davis and Peniger, Cayden D’Costa and Jordan Herndon had started the previous year. D’Costa, a 6-2 senior guard, averaged 13 points and 7 rebounds last season. When his coach asked for rebounds, D’Costa answered, pulling down 16 rebounds in the championship game. “I was just doing my job,” D’Costa said. “My job the whole game was to take out their post, ’cause I was guarding him. So I was just trying to get on the boards. And then I gave the ball to LeMarcus, because he was hot.” Hudson said D’Costa was the team’s “X factor” all year.

(Continued from previous page)

“When Cayden played well, we were going to be tough to beat because I kinda felt like Jmaury was going to do what Jmaury does, LaMarcus was going to do what LaMarcus did, and Cayden could be that third scorer to get 12 to 15,” he said, “and I didn’t think anybody in the state was going to beat us.”

Herndon, a 5-10 senior guard, suffered a knee injury in Clarendon’s last playoff football game and missed the first seven games of the basketball season. Still, he managed to post 8 ppg, 5 rpg, 3 apg stats to go along with 2-3 steals a game.

Sophomore Lyric Smith, a 6-2 sophomore guard, was the newcomer in the lineup and contributed 8.7 ppg, 5.3 rpg.

When Herndon was sidelined early, 6-0 sophomore guard Anthony Ceniceros filled in.

“He did a good job,” Hudson said. “I think in the long run, Anthony getting that experience might have helped us when Jordan came back. Anthony became more comfortable with the pace of the game as a sophomore.’

Tyler Harper, a 6-0 junior guard, was another contributor off the bench. The Broncos usually used only seven players as they averaged 66 points a game while yielding 47.

The Broncos, true to their name, like to run. They apply tight man-to-man half-court defense to generate turnovers.

Davis and D’Costa, at 6-2, were Clarendon’s tallest players.

“When you talk about us being undersized a bit, you know,” Hudson said. “They (Clarendon’s opponents) may have a size advantage, but can they keep up with the pace of the game? And I think that’s something we took advantage of.”

Most also played football

The Broncos won 31 games and lost only two, both in nondistrict. They captured the White Deer Tournament title and breezed to the District 2-2A championship with a 10-0 record.

However, the season got off to a bit of a sluggish start because of Clarendon’s progress (second round) in the football playoffs. All the Broncos except D’Costa played football.

“We had one practice before we played our first game,” Hudson said. “I didn’t think we hit our stride until halfway through district.”

Davis explained the difficulty of transitioning from football to basketball.

“You don’t have as much timeouts or anything like that,” he said. “In football, you have time to catch your breath. In basketball, it’s just down and back and down and back. It took me until like district to get into really like basketball shape.”

Davis, a 180-pounder, excels in football as a running back and slot back. He’s already committed to Texas Tech, where he may play safety.

Despite the transition from football, the Broncos won their first three games before losing to Class 3A Shallowater 61-53 in the Nazareth Tournament finals. A week later, Clarendon won a showdown of defending state champions, beating Class 1A Texline 60-56 with Peniger scoring 21 points.

Clarendon’s second – and last – loss came in late December when it bowed to Class 4A Canyon 46-32 in the Canyon Holiday Tournament finals.

That loss had an impact on the Broncos.

“I think after that, it kinda woke us up like, ‘We’re not where we need to be,’” D’Costa said.

Davis agreed that the Canyon loss really opened the players’ eyes.

“Made us look at everything that we had to fix and some things we had to execute,” he said.

Practice became a lot harder after that with an emphasis on defense, they both said.

Hudson took a different tack on the turning point of the season. He thought it was the game with Canyon, which had reached the regional finals in Class 4A the previous year. “You know, I thought it was a hard matchup,” he said. “It was a five-point game going into the fourth quarter. So it’s not like we played bad, they just kinda wore us down and took advantage of their size.”

“I think it was early in the district when we made a turn and started hitting our peak.”

After that Canyon loss, the Broncos won 19 in a row. They dashed past Sunray 60-34 in bidistrict, Vega 86-65 in the area game, Gruver 63-36 in the regional quarterfinals, New Home 64-53 in the regional semifinals and Christoval 60-49 in the regional finals.

Community traveled to Alamodome

In the state games in San Antonio, Clarendon held off LaRue LaPoynter 69-60 in the semis as Davis scored 24 points and grabbed 12 rebounds. That set up the finals meeting with Lipan, which carried a 39-0 record into the game.

Hudson’s whole family – parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles – were among the Bronco backers who filled two full seating sections in the Alamodome. The town of about 2,500 folks supported its team.

The Broncos celebrated the big win that day on the River Walk, then were honored with a big parade and a downtown cookout when they returned to Clarendon.

Even though Clarendon entered the season ranked No. 1 in the state’s Class 2A ratings, Hudson said there were some obstacles to overcome for a repeat championship.

“I think what people forget is we lost Donovan Thompson, who was the (state finals) MVP last year,” he said. “We lost Sylvester Ballard that was a big-time player for us last year.”

Herndon said the loss of a couple of players from the previous year made the 2021-22 team more determined.

“We knew as seniors we had to step up if we wanted to win this year,” he said.

The seniors – and junior Davis – did step up, according to Hudson.

“I’ll even go as far as maybe last year’s team was more talented. But you know how it is when you put seven really good players on a team; sometimes it’s hard to manage all those personalities,” he said.

“This year we had not as many; we still had good players. Last year’s group got along; this year’s group got along better. Not a lot of people thought we would do this again. But the pieces came together.”

In two years at Clarendon, Hudson has coached two state champs and posted a won-lost record of 58-6. Not bad for a 26-year-old coach.

See a team photo of the 2021-22 Clarendon Broncos in the front color section.