The Yates Lions can officially call themselves the No. 1 team in the nation.
The latest national high school basketball polls were released on Monday and the back-to-back Class 4A state champions were listed atop all five of them, reaching a goal that they set for themselves back at the start of the season.
The Lions (34-0), who beat Lancaster 92-73 in the 4A state title game on March 13, were already No. 1 in the RivalsHigh 100 and the MaxPreps Xcellent 25.
Columbus (Ohio) Northland, the former top-ranked team in the other three national polls — the USA Today Super 25, the ESPN RISE Fab 50 and the PrepNation National Prep Poll — lost to Gahanna (Ohio) Lincoln 71-45 in its regional championship game on Saturday, opening the door for the undefeated Lions to slide to the top of all three of those rankings.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling because if you look what we’ve accomplished and the kind of kids we have at the school in that they all come from the same area — to go against people from all across the country and programs that recruit kids from all parts of the state and private schools and schools with 3,000-4,000 kids — and be able to do that is amazing,” Yates coach Greg Wise said. “It’s hard to put into words what a special feeling it is because I know how hard our kids worked. Their mindset at the beginning of the season was to be the best in the country.”
Final rankings for the five national polls will be released in April.
Helping to bolster the Lions’ case was their performance in two out-of-state events: the Iolani Classic in Honolulu and the T-Mobile Invitational in Birmingham. The Lions won both tournaments, which included a win over Philadelphia Neumann-Goretti, a team ranked in the top 10 of all five national polls.
In addition to those wins on their schedule, they set national records for consecutive 100-point games (15) and scoring average (116.2 points per game), ended the season with a 58-game winning streak which dates to last season and had an average margin of victory of 50.7 points per game.
