Lions Advance to the Regional Semis for First Time Since 2006

For just the fourth time in school history – and the second time in the last 90 years – the Fayetteville boys basketball team is headed to the regional semifinals.

“Our guys know they are in rarified air,” said Fayetteville boys basketball coach Jake Diggs. “We’re extremely proud of them, and they have worked really hard to get here.”

The Lions advanced to the fourth round of the playoffs with a 53-35 win over D’Hanis Tuesday in Seguin.

They now advance to the regional semis at 8 p.m. Friday at Austin’s Burger Center against Abbott. The winner of Friday’s game advances to the regional finals at noon Saturday against the Martinsville/ McMullen County semifinal.

Diggs knows Abbott will be a tough matchup.

“They went to the state title game in football,” Diggs 

said of Abbott. “So they are going to be big, strong, athletic.”

Friday’s game will be the first time in the regional semifinals for the Lions since 2006. Before that the Lions hadn’t been there in boys basketball since the 1942 and 1943 seasons.

This historic march was set up by that win Tuesday over D’Hanis that started off rough for the Lions.

“We started off slow, but kept our composure, put some pressure on them and played as a team,” Diggs said.

D’Hanis put extra defensive pressure on usual leading scorer Karson Corn (who scored five Tuesday). But Keagan Supak came up big with a team-high 18 points. He also had a lot of assists to Jake Kubala, who scored 15. Brody Dooley came off the bench to score eight.