When George Washington took the job as head coach of Pebblebrook’s boys basketball team in 2011, the Falcons were coming off a 1-22 season. But he had reason to believe.
Pebblebrook’s eighth-grade feeder team was undefeated and won a championship in a league that included teams from Cobb, Cherokee and Forsyth counties.
Washington started four of those eighth-graders as freshmen.
“I told them if you guys can just stay together, you can be special,’’ Washington said. ‘’You have to create your own tradition. If you create it, our feeder program is too good for kids to go somewhere else. We just wanted to create an atmosphere of winning.’’
Two years later, the dream is coming true.
Pebblebrook - a school with only four state-playoff victories in its history - is ranked No. 9 in Class AAAAAA with a 18-4 record, two wins from claiming the No. 1 seed in Region 4. The Falcons play at Marietta on Friday and at home against Campbell on Saturday.
No other ranked team or potential No. 1 seed in the highest class has made such a turnaround. Pebblebrook was on 4-21 with those freshmen starters in 2012, then 12-14 last season.
Three of the those 2012 freshmen – Kevin Murph, Trhae Mitchell and Chris Nelson – remain starters as juniors. One transferred, but another junior, Ty Hudson, moved in last season, transferring from Mount Vernon Christian. This season, Pebblebrook had a 6-foot-8 junior show up on Pebblebrook's doorstop unannounced in Derek Ogbeide. He came from Canada.
On Tuesday, Pebblebrook scored its best win in years with a 48-42 overtime victory over Hillgrove. Pebblebrook, one of the smaller schools in AAAAAA, had never beaten Hillgrove in any sport.
‘’The first time we played Hillgrove, we tried to press the whole game,’’ Washington said. “We’re very athletic guys, and we make teams go faster than they want. But they beat our press. They’re a veteran team and don’t get rattled. The second time around, we came up with something different.’’
Pebblebrook played more zone and zone trap. It led to a lower-scoring game. Hudson, whom Washington calls ‘’the best guard in the state,’’ scored 17 points and made 10 of 10 free throws. Ogbeide had 12 points, eight rebounds and six blocked shots.
College programs have taken notice. Hudson has offers from UAB, Radford and Tennessee Tech and is being recruited by Georgia, Florida State and others. Murph has offers from Kennesaw State and Jacksonville State and is being recruited by Tennessee, Xavier, Georgia Southern and Virginia Tech. All five starters are college prospects.
Washington said there should be more talent where that came from, if players stay in the program. He was an assistant for eight seasons at McEachern and coached at a Pebblebrook middle school before becoming head coahc. He noted that former NBA player Lorenzo Brown and current University of Memphis sophomore Damien Wilson are former Pebblebrook feeder players who didn’t attend or remain at Pebblebrook.
Those who stayed are making for a historic season.
‘’It’s like I told players when I took the job, it’s going to be a process,’’ Washington said. “I said year three should be our year, and it’s year three. They’re juniors. They’ve been in our system for three years. We saw everything coming into place this summer. They gelled.’’
