Plano East High School’s boys basketball team completed a perfect 33-0 regular season with a 95-29 win over Flower Mound on Wednesday night, claiming the first Dallas Express Team of the Week honor.
With the win, the Panthers — ranked No.1 in the state and No.3 in the country according to MaxPreps — tied the school’s single-season wins record and finished its first-ever undefeated regular season.
“We thought we had a chance to be a really good team, but there’s very, very few teams who have ever done that at the 6A level,” head coach Matt Wester told The Dallas Express. “Our goal, to me, the pure goal, is to win a state championship. That’s really what we were trying to do, so we scheduled the toughest schedule we could and just kind of took it one game at a time and won all our games.”
Wester has been head basketball coach at Plano East since 2012 and has had plenty of time to work with his current group. He has been involved with the senior class since they attended his camps in first grade and has spent the last four years watching them develop into high-caliber players and students.
“We’ve been coaching them year-round for four years,” Wester explained. “Strength and conditioning every fall, every spring, all summer, individual skills all summer, [and] team camps every summer. It’s been a full four-year process to develop these guys already, but they’ve just been best friends and playing together for a long time, and that’s part of their synergy and chemistry — how long they’ve known each other and how great of friends they are.”
Two years ago, Plano East won 20 of its first 21 games and finished the year 24-9 but missed the playoffs. Wester attributed that to the strength of the schedule and immediately worked on playing more demanding games. It has paid off in a big way with back-to-back playoff appearances.
“We played quite a few games I would consider against playoff-level opponents in a playoff-level type of atmosphere,” Wester told The Dallas Express. “They haven’t all been close, but I think that they’ve done a good job preparing us for the playoffs.”
The seniors and upperclassmen have led Plano East all season, and Wester hopes they get rewarded for their hard work.
“We have some excellent basketball players where they rank nationally, and all 14 of our players are uncommitted for college,” he remarked. “Only a couple of them have scholarship offers, and the whole list of accomplishments that are most significant have never been done in our school history. Our school has never had an undefeated season, won a team state championship, and the wins record was 33.”
And the success has not just come on the court. Nine of Plano East’s seniors academically rank in the top 60 of their 1.400-student class, with 4.0 or better GPAs.
Now, it’s off to the Bi-District round of the 6A playoffs, where the Panthers (33-0) will play Prosper Rock Hill (14-16) on Monday.
“Our focus is going to be just to not get outplayed on the extra effort plays because that’s how you lose games — getting outworked,” Wester said. “So, we’re going try to match their extra effort, particularly on the offensive glass.”
The ultimate goal is to win a state championship, but whatever happens the rest of the way, this is not a season Plano East will soon forget.
“It was not easy as we’ve been working as this unit for a long time,” Wester told The Dallas Express. “So we’re just proud of the accomplishment, and I was happy for the guys, and I’m glad that they got to experience something as special as an undefeated regular season.”
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Runners up:
Dallas Mavericks
— The Mavs have won six in a row heading into the All-Star break, but 33 consecutive wins earned the nod for Plano East.
Texas Tech Basketball
— The Red Raiders have a chance to beat two top-10 teams this week, which may have earned the honor any other week.