Royals crowned ESIAC boys’ basketball champions
In their quest for a second ESIAC tournament title in three years, the Delmarva Christian boys’ basketball team seemed to “HITT” all the right notes, as the top-seeded Royals cruised to a 69-33 victory over second-seed Worcester Prep Feb. 17.
“‘HITT’ stands for things for us, and that's what we did,” said Royals coach Marc Hannah. “We Hustled, we played Intelligent, we played Tough, and we played Together. Those words mean play with heart.”
Senior Malachi Light got the Royals going early by hitting a pair of threes and tossing in another bucket to score the home team’s first eight points of the contest.
“We wanted to bring the intensity right off the jump,” Light said. “I'd say that worked out pretty well for us today.”
Worcester Prep battled back a bit, but the selflessness and tenacious defense of the Royals stomped out any hope of a close game.
“Praise the Lord, our guys were locked in for this whole tournament,” Hannah said. “We said going in, if we can play eight quarters of strong defense, we're going to win this thing. That's what we came out and did.”
Delmarva Christian led 20-9 after eight minutes and expanded the lead to 35-12 at halftime.
“We had a game plan going into the game, and I feel like we executed it pretty well,” said senior Kasey Bell. “We started kind of quick, and then we kind of slowed down a little bit; it's all about keeping the intensity up the whole entire game.”
At the half, Light led all scorers with 12, while junior DJ Liles was also in double figures with 10 points. The two finished the game tied with a game-high 20 points. Darrius Liles, the 2024-25 ESIAC Player of the Year, finished with 16 points in the win.
Team play was also evident on the defensive side of the ball, with the Liles brothers joining Bell, Jay Parrish and Landon Jackson as some of the Royals wreaking havoc with a press.
The second half of the title game turned into a party for the boys in purple, as a Seth Mifflin dunk ignited the crowd, and the Royals took a measure of revenge on the Mallards after dropping the soccer title game in fall.
“It felt good, because the soccer one hurt a little bit,” Bell said. “I knew that they were a good team, and we knew that, so we just had to come out here and execute.”
“Our goal all season was win the conference and make states,” Hannah said. “We can only control winning the conference. Now we get to see how we finish out and see if they pick us for the states.”
