Going into the 2024-25 season, Nixa High School’s basketball teams performed better than some had expected.
Nixa boys basketball won a game by 26 points when they were predicted to lose by 11.5 points and defeated the third-ranked team in the state. The team was ranked first in their district, and fifth in the state of Missouri.
After the previous season, people in the Nixa community may have expected less this year.
“It’s just given us more confidence and more momentum into district play, and it’s just going to keep helping us down the road,” senior Jaise Combs said. “It’s only going to make us better.”
Before the season had started, Sports Illustrated didn’t have Nixa boys in the top 25 teams in the state of Missouri.
“We’ve kind of been lying under the radar all season,” Combs said “It feels good to just beat all these teams and prove everyone wrong and just show them that we’re better than most teams.”
The boys aren’t the only Nixa basketball team proving people wrong. The girls’ team also had a similar season. Though they received less doubt than the boys, some still considered them the underdog in a few big games.
“I feel like that motivated us a lot,” senior Addyson Ruffin said. “Because you always hear things about what people say and I feel like that just adds to our motivation and what we are playing for.”
Sports Illustrated had also released an article predicting where the girls’ basketball team would stand in the state, and the magazine predicted Nixa girls’ basketball to be 13th. However, after beating some of the top-ranked teams in the state, they were seated at fifth. One reason why the team may have performed better than predicted is because of how close the team was.
“We’re more tight-knit because there are six seniors,” senior Karis Ferguson said. “So we know that we have little time together … so we’re playing for each other every time we step on the court.”
Some of the girls on the team said that the preseason predictions didn’t phase them.
“We don’t pay too much attention to preseason polls or even in season because we know what we can bring to the table,” Ferguson said.
Senior Brooke Teter said that focusing on the team and improving helped keep them focused on the games at hand rather than the odds.
“We just have to stay together because we are a team, and we know what we can do,” Teter said. “They don’t know who we truly are and how we truly play.”
Ferguson said that the community should be proud of the team because they defied expectations.
“We’re just really proud of ourselves and I think the whole community should be really proud of us too,” Ferguson said.