Lafayette’s season sweep of LCA builds momentum toward postseason
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Lafayette has a winning record within the 43rd District for the second year in a row.
- The Generals have nine wins in 10 games, including a two-game sweep of LCA.
- District run ahead: Lafayette will meet Tates Creek in district semifinals.
Building Lafayette boys basketball back into a winning program has not been easy.
Gone are the days when Lafayette enjoyed a significant share of Lexington’s basketball talent pool.
With Lexington’s six public schools and three private schools all serious about basketball, it makes no difference that the Generals reigned as Boys’ Sweet 16 state champions four times from 1942 to 1957 and twice more since — 1979 and 2001.
That’s ancient history. Recent history has been more problematic.
When Vince Sanford took over the program in 2022, Lafayette had won just four games the season before. It hadn’t had a winning record since 2019. It hadn’t reached the 43rd District finals or 11th Region tournament since the year before that.
But after Lafayette’s 58-51 at home over Lexington Christian on Tuesday, Lafayette secured a 5-3 mark within the 43rd District and climbed to 13-9 overall with five games left in the regular season. It was the first time Lafayette has swept its regular season series with LCA since 2019.
“It’s tough. When I took the job here, I knew it was going to be tough. I knew it wasn’t going to be an overnight success,” Sanford said. “But it feels good to just win more games than you did the previous year. This year, we want to continue to build. We’ve won more games than we have in a while.”
The win over LCA showed Lafayette’s progress and maturity so far this season, Sanford said.
“We wanted to be patient and take the shots that we wanted to take,” Sanford said. “In the past, some of our losses was where we were sped up and not taking the shots we that we needed to take. We’ve taken the shots that the opponent wanted us to take.”
Tyler Hunt led the Generals with 19 points and 10 rebounds. His hook shot in the lane to end the third quarter gave Lafayette a 38-36 lead and started an 11-2 run over the next five minutes that essentially sealed the victory. Ben Marsh added 16 points. Cooper Kirk scored 12. Lafayette outrebounded LCA 32-25 and had 16 second-chance points to the Eagles’ four.
LCA (12-14, 2-5) relied almost exclusively on Caleb Marshall and Dawson Farmer, who scored 25 and 22 points, respectively.
When the 43rd District Tournament begins the week of Feb. 23, Lafayette will face Tates Creek in the semifinals for a chance to reach the district championship game and with that, earn its first trip to the 11th Region tournament in eight seasons.
“It’s just a really good feeling to be above .500 because I haven’t witnessed it here at all at Lafayette,” said Hunt, who was honored at the third quarter break for joining Lafayette’s 1,000 point club during the game. “But I feel great. I’m proud of these guys coming together as a team. We feel a lot closer together as a team than we have the last couple years. I think that’s helping us out a lot.”
This season got off to a rough start, however. Lafayette stumbled through December with a 3-6 record that included five straight losses. It then lost two of its next three in January.
“Really, I just think that we’ve gotten in our heads at the end of the season the last couple years. Guys would get down in their head and quit. This year, we didn’t,” Hunt said. “When we got down to 2-6 or 2-7 or whatever it was at the start of the season, we didn’t give up. We just kept going and got our momentum.”
Lafayette has won nine of its last 10 games with the only loss coming to perennial 43rd District overdog Lexington Catholic.
Lafayette split its regular season series with Tates Creek. Like Lafayette, the Commodores (13-9, 4-2) have been rebuilding under second-year coach Keaton Belcher. Earlier this season, Tates Creek made a school record 29 3-pointers in a 115-89 win over Adair County. On Jan. 12, the Commodores nearly upset Lexington Catholic before falling 68-65 in double overtime.
