Manning set to face Ridgeland-Hardeeville for 3A lower state title

The 3A state boys basketball playoff is down to its final four, and Manning finds itself among the last teams standing. The Monarchs, 23-3 on the season, will face off against Ridgeland-Hardeeville on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. at the Florence Center in Florence.

The Monarchs, 23-3 on the season, will face off against Ridgeville/Hardeeville for the lower state title on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. at Florence Center in Florence.

The Jaguars, at 26-3, have won their last 16 games and have advanced without much of a challenge in the first three rounds, defeating Dillon, Edisto and Marion by an average of 27 points. Manning got a hard-fought win on Tuesday against Strom Thurmond, winning 55-50 to earn a spot in the lower state championship.

"I know Coach (Jeremiah) Faber over there, and he's an old-school coach and has been around the game for a long time," said Manning head coach Rolando Shuler, in his fourth season at Manning. "I know they're coming to play and I think they're about the same team as us -- it's going to be hard-nosed."

The Jaguars are led by seniors Devin Butler, Rashamel Butler and Nygel Boozer. Devin Butler, a 6-foot-3-inch forward, averages 14.3 points per game; 6-3 point guard Rashamel Butler is adding 13.9 points and Boozer, a 6-2 shooting guard, averages 13.1. Shuler said he puts the emphasis on his own team moreso than on its opponents.

"With all due respect to those kids and their coaches, we try to make it more about us than about them," he said. "(The players') mindset is the game. We try to eliminate (thinking about) the title of lower state championship -- we started out the playoffs saying, 'We've got one game to play, four quarters a game, eight minutes a quarter,' and we just keep reminding them at the 3-point line, the free throw line, none of that stuff changes. They've just given the game a title and that if we come to play like regular, we should be fine."

Shuler has coached the seniors on this year's team all four years and has known some of them going back to seventh grade AAU trips, he said. This year's team's success has not come as a surprise to him.

"Actually, we saw this four years ago," he said. "We told them that they would be in this position if they just kept working together and keep believing in each other as a team. We have a lot of fun in our practices, and that's just because these guys have been around each other for so long, and they're used to everything that the other person's going to do."

Shuler said with good teams like the ones still standing in the 3A playoffs, it isn't so much about skills or conditioning, but is more psychological.

"It's not necessarily the best team that's going to win as far as skills go, but it's more about will than anything," Shuler said. "At practice, we made it hard for them, doing things like having six guys on the court playing defense instead of five so they understand how hard it's going to be when the game gets going. It's going to be tough, so we just try to prepare our players, doing everything we can to make sure they're prepared."