It took 26 years for Johnny Estelle to return to the Lone Star Conference (LSC) championship game, but this time it was as a coach for the Javelinas instead of a player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On March 6, the Men\u2019s Javelina Basketball team fell against West Texas A&M University in the LSC championship game in Frisco, Texas. There was a silver lining for the history making Javelinas, as they advanced to the 2022 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament for the third time in six years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt feels very good and very gratifying, our team is a collection of young men that work hard\u2026we have family values, they come from great families,\u201d Estelle said. \u201cThey work, battle, and play with Javelina spirit and pride every day\u2026to see them reap the benefits of that it means the world to me because that\u2019s what life should be about. You work hard, you stay together, you should be able to experience the good things in life. This is one of the great things this sport has to offer, the national tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even though the Javelinas fell short in the LSC Championship, their performance in beating top four teams to advance to the finals helped them be ranked the No. 5 team in the South-Central Region playoff bracket for the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe preparation doesn\u2019t change you know,\u201d Assistant Coach Omar Gonzalez said about competing in the tournaments. \u201cOur league is a really good league, and it shows with having six of the eight teams of the region be represented in our South-Central Region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Players like Ja Robertson and Dayante McClellan are more than grateful and excited for the opportunities they earned as a team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was excited of course,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cI knew that we belonged in the national tournament, we weren\u2019t an average team. We haven\u2019t done anything but grow over the years. Usually, teams around this time are going downhill but we keep moving forward. I was excited but I knew at the end of the day we belonged on that platform\u2026people are going to know who we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Javelinas are in full game mode ready to ball out at the NCAA Tournament and bring a win back home to South Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re playing for the National title so that holds a lot of weight\u2026also with that we need to enjoy the moment,\u201d McClellan said before the start of the NCAA tournament. \u201cTwo years ago, we made it to the national tournament, but it was canceled due to COVID so no one on our current roster has ever played in the national tournament so it\u2019ll be good to kind of slow down and enjoy the moment with our brothers and acknowledge that we are making history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LSC, NCAA tournament runs It took 26 years for Johnny Estelle to return to the Lone Star Conference (LSC) championship game, but this time it… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":6868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[125,131,3],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[152],"class_list":["post-6867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-features","category-newsletter","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"authors":[{"term_id":152,"user_id":93,"is_guest":0,"slug":"zena-desouza","display_name":"Zena Desouza","avatar_url":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/wp-content\/litespeed\/avatar\/285b57c37b71d8adf4ff0e103f56bd0d.jpg?ver=1776219299","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6869,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6867\/revisions\/6869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6867"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=6867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}