By John Breech / Staff

The trophy case at Milton High School is going to be a little bit fuller on Monday thanks to the Eagle basketball team.

One year after a state title game loss to Wheeler, Milton returned to the Gwinnett Center and came away with the hardware.

Behind 19 points from Dai Jon Parker, Milton brought the AAAAA state championship back to North Fulton with a 56-46 victory over Westlake.

Thanks to a stifling Milton defense, Westlake only shot 27 percent from the floor. The 46 points also represented the Lions lowest scoring output of the season.

Dai Jon Parker may have been the Eagles leading scorer in the game, but Milton head coach David Boyd wasn't interested in talking about the junior’s offense after the game, he only wanted to talk about Parker’s defense. “I think Dai Jon Parker is probably the best high school defender in the country,” Boyd says. “We have a lot of faith in him defensively and he played a great game and we’ve come to expect that from Dai Jon because he’s such a tremendous athlete.”

Boyd didn’t want to give all the defensive credit to Parker though, “We got a good defensive effort from everybody.”

All season long Boyd has been assigning Parker to the opposing team’s best player, for Westlake that was Clemson-signee Marcus Thornton. However, Parker never really got a chance to defend Thornton because of a freak pre-game incident that left the Lion senior injured and unable to play.

As Westlake ran onto the court for their pre-game warm up, Thornton went up to chest bump a teammate. As he came down from the chest bump, the Westlake star landed on a basketball that was sitting at mid-court and he damaged his ankle. Thornton tried to play through the injury but after only 90 seconds of action, he was pulled from the game and taken to the Westlake locker room where he would stay for most of the night.

“That changed the game completely,” Parker said of Thornton’s injury.

“We thought he tweaked the ankle just a little bit,” Westlake coach Darron Rogers said. “But when he [went to the locker room] to get it wrapped, it swelled on him.”

Thornton scored Westlake’s first bucket of the game before exiting.

Although Milton led for all but 29 seconds of the first half, the first two quarters were still tight. Thanks to nine points each from Julian Royal and Evan Nolte, the Eagles were able to forge a 28-26 halftime lead. Milton led by as many as six in the first half.

The state title was won in the second half though. That’s when Westlake started feeling the pressure of the Eagles 1-3-1 zone. Rogers gave Boyd credit for running the unique defense, “[Boyd] was smart,” Rogers said. “They ran a zone against us that we really hadn’t seen them run.”

Several Lion turnovers turned into easy buckets for Nolte, Royal and Parker. The three Milton stars combined to score 16 of Milton’s 18 third quarter points and the 2-point Eagle halftime lead was 44-34 after three quarters. Parker punctuated a 11-4 quarter ending Milton run with a 3-pointer at the buzzer that elicited a loud reaction from the Milton student section. 

The fourth quarter proved to be nothing but a long countdown to the Eagles first state championship. Shannon Scott gleefully dribbled the ball around the backcourt on every Milton possession, happily melting away precious seconds. Scott, who only scored four points in the game, did come up big for Milton with six assists and five steals.

In the game’s final 90 seconds, Westlake cut the lead to eight points, but free throws by Parker and Scott iced the game and the state championship for Milton (29-4). 

Milton’s scoring was paced by Parker’s 19 points, but Royal and Nolte also had solid games. Royal finished the night with 15 points and five blocks while Nolte scored 14. For the second night in a row, Jordan Loyd didn’t do much damage on the scoreboard, but he did it in other ways. The junior only scored four points, but he did have six rebounds and four assists.

Boyd – who has now won state championships with Campbell (1982), Tucker (1996) and Berkmar (2000, 2001) – is now the 11th coach in state history to win five state titles. He is the first coach to win titles at four different schools and the first coach to win a title in four different decades.

For Westlake (30-3), Thornton’s replacement Nkosi Ali led the team in scoring with 12 points. The senior scored nine in the second quarter including a buzzer beater that trimmed Milton’s lead to 28-26. Jeff Newberry also reached double digits for the Lions as he poured in 10 points.

Westlake was going for their third state title following championships in 1999 and 2002.

Here’s an interesting question, who’s the odds on favorite for the 2011 state title?

“Probably Milton,” Parker says with a smile.

Boyd concurs, “We’ve got every body back next year, so I’d say that’s a good thing.”