The legacy of the 2024 Pine Bluff boys’ basketball team is still being written five months after the Zebras won their second straight state championship.
Three of that team’s seniors signed letters of intent to play college basketball Thursday morning in the media room at the former Jack Robey Junior High School campus, which is currently serving as the temporary high school campus.
PBHS athletic director and head boys’ basketball coach Billy Dixon said sending players to college is a great feeling.
“It’s what everybody on every level wants, looks, dreams for, hopes for,” Dixon said. “Happy day for our parents, because they get a chance to send three more of their young men to school. To school first, then play basketball next. It’s the kids’ dream to play basketball. It’s the parents’ dream for them to get an education.”
All three of Thursday’s signees signed with junior colleges. Braylen Hall signed with South Arkansas College in El Dorado. Kaden Higgins signed with UA Cossatot in De Queen. Jai’Kori Phillips is leaving Arkansas to play at Lincoln Trail College in Robinson, Illinois.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The event lasted nearly an hour and a half as several family members of all three spoke to the signees, congratulating them but also offering words of encouragement and advice. The members of the team still in school attended and hyped up the trio as the school played videos of their respective highlights from this past season.
Hall said it meant a lot to him and the others to have friends and family fill nearly every seat in the room.
“The support came out to help and support,” Hall said. “It’s just a blessing.”
With Hall, Higgins and Phillips signing, all 10 seniors on the 2024 PBHS team are going to college. Two will play football, while another five accepted basketball scholarships. Dixon said another graduate had offers but chose a college of his choice, instead, and will attempt to walk on to that school’s program. The other two, Dixon said, graduated in the top five of their class academically.
Dixon said sending everyone to college will be a big part of this senior class’s legacy at PBHS.
“Going back-to-back (as state champions) is one great thing,” Dixon said. “The other thing, our legacy that we look back to is that having a five-year running, and these guys were three and four years out of that five years, that as a team, we’ve had a 3.5 GPA as a team, which is very seldom talked about.”