In a World 🌎 where Hype is flowing like water 💧, it refreshing to know that we truly have SKILLED coaches leading our Middle School 🏫 Basketball 🏀 programs ! Darian Brown coached a combo travel team to victory at Floyd County this past weekend, shortly after Kris Richardson did the same with a young Girls 👧 team in Roanoke !

Back when Nike was originally rolling out the Air Jordan brand they had a series of commercials where a young Spike Lee played the role of Mars Blackmon and repeatedly said its gotta be the Shoes Mike, its gotta be the shoes 👟👟👟.

Kayla Nester is in her initial year of being the Athletic Director at Carroll County Middle School 🏫 and wow, does she have two Big Time Basketball minds leading her programs !!

Not sure who plays the role in the commercial but I can see Mrs Nester holding a Basketball in her hands and someone saying, its gotta be the AD, its gotta be the AD !!

Let’s get back to the group that Coach Brown took over to Floyd County and how the opportunity came about in the first place. In the words of the artist 🎨 known as Coach Brown :

” I got a text from Floyd county varsity coach asking if I had a 7th grade group that could play Saturday. I coach a group called the raptors which is a combination of galax and Carroll kids. I got 10 of them together and took them to play in the “2025 Floyd County Christmas Bash”. I didn’t know what to expect because we haven’t started travel ball practices yet but we ended up winning the whole thing.

We played a team out of Blacksburg and a team named team xtreme which has kids from Pulaski, auburn , and christiansburg. We played them each once and went 2-0. We got a bye in to the championship where we beat team xtreme.

We beat them by 2 the first time around and got them by like 10-15 in the championship. Super proud of both galax and Carroll kids and we plan to go to another tournament this coming Saturday in Patrick County.”.

Congratulations 👏👏👏 to Coach Brown and the players from both Schools 🏫 !!

Keep up the Great Work Coach !!!

Pop Quiz : What has an unblemished record and a scoring average that is North of 90 points per game ? Anthony Barnes and his reved up Carroll County High School 🏫 Cavaliers!!!

Anthony Barnes has some early season MOJO going on after two victories over neighboring schools but Mother Nature held up the rivalry game with Galax.

CCHS is set for the home version of the Pulaski County High game on Friday night and Athletic Director Kevin DeHaven will work on finding a good date for the clash with the Maroon Tide.

There’s no Crystal Ball that can predict how long the Cavaliers can light up the scoreboard but it will be really fun to find out !

Alumni Day highlighted the program that Head Coach Anthony Barnes has built on since he arrived on The Hill !

Winning breeds Winning plays a role in the process as well. Barnes inherited players from Seth Greer (Football) and Coach Ogle (Golf ⛳) that found new levels of success in the past few months.

Isaiah Easter is averaging over 30 points per game to this point and as teams start to double and triple team the Senior playmaker, Barnes will have others capable of stepping up to score a basket 🧺.

Will we win after Elijah Cox takes his 6’5 frame to college ? How will we do when Davis Reitzel graduates 🎓 and focuses on Academics at Virginia Tech ? What happens when you lose your All-Time scoring leader as part of a six Senior class?

Maybe, the answer is that this Barnes fella, can coach Cavaliers up!!! We know that he has former players that surround him as part of his coaching staff. Jason Stockner, Ryan Phillips, Ryan Largen, Cody Reece and Jabin Talley each wore the uniform. ➕ Darian Brown might have been a Maroon Tide in his previous life, he now bleeds Cavalier.

By the time Friday night 🌙 rolls around, folks will be looking for an excuse to avoid Cabin Fever and the answer is an easy one – come to The Hill and catch some thoroughbred Hoops !