WORTON — When they host a playoff game on Monday, Kent County High School’s girls have an opportunity to turn another page in the script that their head coach Tyray Johnson started writing two years ago.
They are two wins away from winning a region championship.
The Trojans played .500 basketball in the month of February, going 3-3 to finish the regular season at 7-12 and gain the No. 2 seed in the Class 1A East Region I tournament.
The seven wins are the most in a season since before the COVID pandemic and the most in a season for Johnson, who took over the girls basketball program at his alma mater four years ago.
“I’m excited about the seven wins, and I’m feeling good about the playoffs,” Johnson said in a telephone interview Saturday, March 1.
“I think we have a legitimate shot of winning the region. The players all have bought into what we’re trying to do,” he said.
“We’re trying to win the region,” he added for emphasis.
When Johnson was hired for the 2021-22 season, he was Kent County’s third head coach in as many years and essentially was tasked with rebuilding a program from scratch.
There were no holdovers from the Trojans’ 12-10 campaign of 2019-20, which was the first time they finished on the plus side of .500 since 2012-13, and the 2020-21 season had been cancelled because of the pandemic
It was a rocky start for Johnson and company in 2021-22, a two-win campaign that abruptly folded — with four games remaining — because of a shrinking roster.
There was improvement the following season as the number of wins climbed to five.
But the Trojans plateaued at five wins in 2023-24, when they lost in the opening round of the region tournament for the second year in a row.
They’ve celebrated a breakthrough this season, with win No. 6 at home on Feb. 13 and win No. 7 also at home in the last game of the regular season on Feb. 21.
Kent County defeated North Dorchester, 47-39, for the milestone seventh win behind the double-digit scoring of juniors Love Jackson and Jayla Sisco and seven, eight and nine rebounds, respectively, from Saniyah Jones, Jane Cleary and Sisco.
After a closely contested first frame that ended in a 7-7 tie, the Trojans asserted themselves with a 20-point second quarter.
Jackson found Sisco cutting through the paint to snap a 9-9 draw with 7 minutes, 7 seconds remaining in the second quarter, and the Trojans led the rest of the way.
Jackson hit the back end of a two-shot foul with 5:02 remaining in the half, part of an odd sequence that included two North Dorchester technical fouls and a player ejection, to start a run of 14 unanswered points that extended the spread to 27-11 with just under a minute remaining in the half.
Jackson scored 10 of the Trojans’ 20 second-quarter points. Sisco contributed six and Kate Cannon added the other four.
KCHS took its largest lead of the afternoon at 17 points, 31-14, after scoring on back-to-back possessions to open the second half.
North Dorchester (5-15) outscored its host in the third quarter, 15-10, with Remedy Wongus and Diamond Newbill totaling 11 points, to shrink the deficit to 37-29 with eight minutes to play.
KCHS regained its double-digit lead, 40-29, on a Cannon field goal as part of an 8-0 run to start the fourth quarter.
Wongus scored six of her game-high 18 points in the waning minutes, but North Dorchester’s comeback bid fell short.
Sisco finished with 15 points to lead a balanced Kent County offense.
Jackson contributed 14 points, followed by Cleary with eight, Cannon with six and Jones with four.
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After receiving first-round byes, Kent County will host No. 3 seed Colonel Richardson (7-13) on Monday. Tip-off is at 5 p.m.
This is a rematch of the 2024 playoff game, which the Colonels won at home, 58-48, after closing the game on a 20-11 run.
The teams split their regular-season series this season — each winning at home by nine points.
Top seed Perryville (15-3) will host No. 4 seed Bo Manor (1-19) in Monday’s other region semifinal.
Bo Manor ousted winless St. Michaels in the only opening-round game Feb. 28.
The semifinal winners will meet in the East Region I championship game Wednesday, March 5 at the higher seed.
Winning a region title is “something I put out to the team two years ago,” coach Johnson told The Evening Enterprise in Saturday’s phone interview.
Johnson said he’s “been steady preaching it, painting the picture” and now the players “are believing we can win it.”