Liberty head basketball coach Kevin Soares calls out to players during the Big City Showdown basketball tournament at Cox Pavilion at UNLV Saturday, Jan 21, 2023. Durango beat Liberty 76-69.
Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023 | 9:37 p.m.
Virtually everyone on the Liberty High School bench wore matching shirts with the message “Locked In” for tonight’s Class 5A Southern Regional semifinal basketball game against Coronado.
The Patriots certainly lived up to their mantra.
They jumped out to a 17-4 lead and held Coronado to five field goals in the first half in a convincing 78-45 win to advance to next week’s state tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center.
“We don’t worry about anybody else,” Liberty coach Kevin Soares said. “All we worry about is controlling what we can control. My focus is on these kids in that locker room. When we come out and play our best basketball, I think we can play against anybody. We proved that this whole season.”
The narrative was that any of the top four teams in Las Vegas could win the Nevada title, with reigning champion Liberty, Coronado, Durango and Bishop Gorman taking turns beating each other in the regular season.
After tonight, that narrative is slightly different. Liberty, you can argue, is in the driver’s seat to defend its championship.
Liberty's top players — guards Dedan Thomas Jr. and Angelo Kambala — were unstoppable in the win.
Thomas, the Class 5A Player of the Year and a prized UNLV recruit, scored 22 points and controlled the pace of the game. Kambala, like he’s done all season, extended the defense with his outside shooting ability in scoring 24 points.
“That’s two Division I guards,” Soares said of his top players.
Soares has never wavered in the belief that he had the best team in Nevada — if not one of the top teams on the West Coast. During the regular season, they won a rematch of last year’s state championship game against Gorman by 23 points.
They won’t have to play Gorman again.
Durango upset the powerhouse Gaels 63-56 in tonight’s other regional semifinal for a spot in the state tournament, meaning Gorman won’t be in the final four in Nevada for the first time in nearly two decades.
The Gaels had won nine straight titles through 2019, but now it’s Liberty that is two wins away from a consecutive championship streak.
Liberty split its season series with Durango but, after dominating Coronado, has momentum on its side. The teams play 5 p.m. Saturday at Liberty for the Las Vegas city championship — although the loser still will play in state.
“I think there’s a lot of people that still doubted us (at the beginning of the year),” Soares said. “I think a lot of people didn’t see (the state championship) game because it was up north. We made the adjustments and did what we needed to do to win the state title. And it wasn’t a fluke. I think a lot of people think it was a fluke. But this year, we kind of set our goals to try to repeat, because if you win it twice, it’s not a fluke.”
