By Marshall Tempest
Reporter
The 2024-2025 season of the Apopka boys basketball team ended on Thursday, Feb. 21, when the Blue Darters lost 54-32 to Seminole (Sanford) in the 2025 FHSAA Class 7A Boys Basketball State Tournament Region 1 Final.
The Apopka Blue Darters ended their season with a record of 21-8, a district championship, and a memorable playoff run.
“I’m incredibly proud of our guys and the journey,” Scott Williams, head coach of the Apopka boys basketball team, said in a Friday interview. “You know, we will grieve together. We’ll heal together. As I told them last night, ‘Right now, all we feel and see is the eighth loss of the season. With each passing day, we’ll start to recognize the 21 and 8. We’ll begin to see the full path we took, the effort it took to get there, and the brotherhood formed among these young men, along with the joy of going through that process.’”
Apopka’s most significant weakness this season had been turnovers. When the Blue Darters’ turnovers get out of hand, the game runs away from them. This was a tough matchup for Apopka, paired against Seminole’s brand of pressure and full and half-court traps. Apopka gave up 25 turnovers and allowed Seminole to turn those turnovers into 25 points, which more than covered the 22-point difference in the game.
Seminole’s game plan of attacking the paint and constantly looking for high-percentage shots inside worked well. They collected 36 points inside the paint and shot 53.5 percent from the field inside the three-point arc.
The First Half
Like most of the state tournament for Apopka, the first half was a defensive battle, but the second half cracked the game open. Unfortunately for the Blue Darters this time around, they weren’t the ones gaining momentum in the second half.
In the first quarter, Apopka and Seminole tried to determine how to attack each other. It was evident that Seminole aimed to penetrate the paint, while Apopka successfully shot the ball but did not finish at the rim efficiently. This marked a role reversal for Apopka, as the Blue Darters typically excel in attacking the paint and thrive near the basket.
The Blue Darters missed layups and gave away turnovers early to the Seminole’s pressure and physical style of defense, but they still found open looks. At the end of the first quarter, Apopka’s Zacarick Davis hit a big three-pointer to push Apopka ahead 12-10.
The lead in the first half changed nearly every scoring possession, with the Blue Darters and Seminole very stout defensively. But, the second quarter started very slow, with Sanford leading 15-14 with 4:10 left in the first half. Near the end of the second quarter, Apopka was beginning to give up a lot of turnovers to Sanford’s double team and zone defense. The Blue Darters were getting great looks but couldn’t finish at the rim. Apopka scored just four points to Sanford’s nine in the second quarter.
Apopka went into the locker room at halftime trailing 19-16, and the talks at halftime were about not rising to the moment, Williams said.
“I feel like the game was decided in the first half, believe it or not. We were getting everything we wanted, doing everything we wanted, but we were tight and didn’t execute well. A three-point deficit should have been a double-digit lead for us. Nothing was happening in the game that wasn’t firmly in our control and grasp, but it felt like the moment was too big. We just didn’t take our time to finish the little things, whether it was layups or handling the basketball.”
Williams said they were still in good shape at halftime but felt like the game could get out of hand for the Darters if Seminole got going and Apopka’s game stayed the same. But they couldn’t have foreseen what would happen in the third quarter.
The Second Half
The third was a nightmare for Apopka immediately as the Blue Darters’ Jude Angervil suffered an injury only a minute into the second half. Losing Angervil took an immediate toll on the Blue Darters, who would miss his dynamic ability to be a threat on both ends of the ball with his 6-foot-5-inch frame.
Apopka was trailing 25-17 after Seminole went on a 6-1 run in the first 2:44 of the third quarter. Shortly after, another key piece in Apopka’s lineup, Jahi Bowden, also suffered an injury.
“So then you had a Seminole team that played much better in the second half, and then we lost Jude, and then we lost Jahi, and Jermichael (Johnson) really wasn’t right all night because he had a knee problem he’d been dealing with all week, some tendonitis that really flared up on him after Monday night’s game,” Williams said. “We weren’t so deep that we couldn’t overcome it, but we just weren’t very good in the second half. But there obviously were some mitigating factors.”
With just 1:37 to go in the third quarter, Apopka trailed 33-26. Apopka was struggling defensively to stop Seminole’s speed and strength inside with Angervil and Bowden out.
Williams went on to praise Seminole and said that they are not a five seed, as advertised. He said the only reason Seminole was the fifth seed coming into the tournament was that they spent the first eight or nine games without some key players who were also on the school’s football team. Williams said Seminole is as good as anyone in the district, and they have been for quite a while.
To end the third quarter and suck the energy out of the Apopka fans that packed in the Joe A. Sterling Gymnasium, Seminole went on an 8-0 run in the final minute and a half. Apopka was trailing 41-26 going into the final quarter after being outscored 22-10 in the third quarter.
The Blue Darters faced a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter and continued to succumb to Sanford’s pressure and double teams. Sanford finished the game by outscoring Apopka 13-6 in the fourth quarter to secure the blowout win, 54-32.
Williams commended Seminole on its success this season and as a program but said his team did not take advantage of its opportunities.
“When we found ourselves in the right positions, we managed to create excellent shots, even throughout the entire second half,” he said. “Even as the game slipped away from us, our issue was that, far too often, we just didn’t get in good spots, and then we just kind of fell apart defensively in the second half. Once again, this was primarily because we lacked physicality, and there are no excuses for that. Seminole deserved to win; they outplayed us and executed their game plan more effectively.”
Williams expressed high hopes for next season but acknowledged the challenges the program will face replacing five seniors who were a big part of the team’s success. Williams also said he is excited to see who will step up and take the leadership mantle on the team in the coming months during off-season work.
The Apopka Chief is an award-winning weekly newspaper serving the greater Apopka area in Central Florida since 1923.
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