By Marcus Uhe
The Casey Cavaliers Under 14 Boys basketball team cut the nets off the rings at their home court at Casey Stadium last week after completing an extraordinary undefeated calendar year across five different competitions.
The Under 14 Club Championships was the final in a run of unprecedented dominance for Casey Basketball teams, where they completed their 59th and final win from 59 games across varied competitions and with challenges from all corners of the country.
A squad exploding with envious depth, including seven state-level players, could not be stopped in 2024, dominating whatever competition was thrown their way.
Comprehensive wins in the Eltham-Dandenong Junior Basketball Tournament in January and the South Eastern Junior Basketball Tournament in March sowed the seeds for a special year, before claiming this illustrious ‘Triple Crown’; the National Junior Basketball Classic, the Victoria Junior Basketball League and National Club Championships for their age groups.
From their 59 matches, just four were won with single figure margins, with the Australian Junior Championships seeing them win by an average of 36 points per contest.
“Across the board, all 10 of them are high quality elite athletes,” the team’s coach, Mitch Taylor said.
“For a lot of teams, the stars will play and blow [the lead] out, and then the bench will come on and will kind of cut back in, but for us, the stars will extend the lead and the bench will extend the lead against the other team’s starters as well.
“We’ve got two boys that play for Victoria that come off the bench for us and realistically we don’t consider it a starting five and a bench – it’s just two even groups across the board.”
As word spread about their successes and extraordinary athletes, including the slam-dunking 6’5” 13-year-old Mobarede ‘Barry’ Akingbade, the team quickly took on celebrity status in basketball circles.
A Facebook page initially dedicated to a fundraising effort for the squad reached 2000 followers by the end of their year as word spread about the outrageous successes they experienced.
The players quickly began facilitating photo and pre-game dunk requests from not only fans, but opponents, while the sight of opposition scouts filming their training sessions was not an uncommon sight – nor were post-game jersey swaps.
Rolling into the National Club Championships with customised Nike Air Force sneakers for before and after the game, and ‘Sabrina’ shoes for on the court, with the team name and player numbers etched into them, there was a swagger and prestige about this abundantly talented squad of teenagers that somehow never infiltrated their team-first mentality.
It’s a trait that Taylor believes was arguably their most impressive, declaring their lack of collective ego “amazing”.
“A lot of kids could have cracked it and wanted to score 50 against some of the teams when we were winning by 80 or 90, but they were awesome all year.
“I think the boys realised that all the success we were having was because everyone was being so unselfish, and that was one of the driving factors.
“We were winning games by 60/70 points and the starts are jumping around and going crazy for the guys that are coming off the bench behind them for making threes, even though we were up by 70.
“Not in a silly way, they were more just happy to see their friends succeed.
“When every single kid on the team is happy for their teammate’s success, you know you’re going to go a long way.”
The successes they’ve experienced are undeniable and will be etched into Casey Basketball folklore, but harder to quantify are the memories and friendships that the players cultivated throughout the year.
Ahead of the National Championships on their home courts in September, the boys spent the week living together in an AirBNB in Narre Warren North to minimise travel constraints and further solidify their already tight bonds.
Given their differing paths and varied ages within the squad, there’s a chance they may never take the court together as a team again, but internally, they’ll be connected forever.
“They’ll look back on how much we won by and that type of thing but most memories for them will probably be staying together at the AirBNB for the whole week, the stuff they did before and after games.
“We got them to jump in a cold bath and do ice baths.
“Watching each other do that and joking around, I think the friendships and how close they get off the court for that week is definitely something they’ll remember more.
“They’ll look back on photos and they’ll think about games but the friendships and how close they got during the week will be more important for them.”
The Basketball Australia U14 Club Championships winning squad: Angus Dixon, Kaitiaki Andrew, Jai Kamande, Zac Taylor, Archie Robinson, Tom Fernandez, Kael Likiliki, Mobarede Akingbade, Aston Mccallum, Mofeoluwa Adio, Elijah Honeyford, Emmanuel Akla Labella.
