Reflecting on a Historic Season for Watauga Basketball

Postgame scene from the big overtime win against Mount Tabor 80-77 last season in the second round of the playoffs February 28th, 2025 Photo Credits: Troy Wilson

Troy Wilson, Watuaga 10 

Last year, in the 2024 - 2025 season, the Watauga Men’s Basketball team had a historic season and advanced to the Elite Eight in the state playoffs. Going into this year, head coach Bryson Payne had high hopes for the postseason and a positive outlook to capture similar success from last year. Watauga was seen as an underdog to make a run coming into the postseason last year, but they defied the odds and had one of the most successful seasons to date. 

Jackson Love, starter and key contributor to the team last year, reflected on the difficulty of the competition last year.

 “A loaded 4A West last year, odds were really stacked against us last year,” said Love.

This season, the team wanted to build off that success and find their stride coming late into the season. The key to success this season was defense for the Pioneers.

“We wanted to build on the success we had last year and continue to do the things that we want to be known for as a program,” said Coach Payne, “We want to be a great defensive team, a disciplined defensive team. Our motto this year was to protect the legacy and remember the things that we did to make us successful and continue to protect those standards every single day.” 

This season the Pioneers got exactly what they needed in Bowen Mayo, a defensive weapon. Mayo has been a reliable and lockdown defender throughout the entire season.

“I think the togetherness of that team, and the unselfishness that we had. I think that's really why we were able to be successful in the playoffs was because of our defense,” said Payne.

This season was also heavily impacted by all of the snowfall and inclement weather that happened during all of January. Coach Payne actually thought the extra time gave them a chance to catch up from football. 

“With football’s success, they ended up playing until mid-December. We kind of started a little bit behind everybody,” said Payne. “We were playing so many games to try to make up for those missed weeks in the beginning of the year, we didn't have a whole lot of time to practice. The snow actually gave us a little bit of time to reset and get in the gym, work on some of those things that we hadn't had as much time as we would have liked to have had to work on.”

Coming into this season, Watauga had two new schools joining the conference. After the switch from 4A to 6A, Watauga welcomed Saint Stephens and McDowell into the Northwestern 6A/7A conference. 

“I think this year, everybody in the league's pretty competitive, everybody in the league can beat anybody,” said Payne. “The competition's a little bit better this year, adding McDowell with a 7A school, you had a bigger school in the mix, so we have to be ready to compete every night.”

The Pioneers season unfortunately came to an end on February 26 in the 2nd round of the 6A NCHSAA State Playoffs in a hard fought game against Central Cabarrus 83-79. The Pioneers finished the season 2nd in the Conference with an overall record of 16-9. 

In closing Payne said,“I was really proud of how the guys dealt with adversity and how well we did in conference this year with missing so many games. I think this senior group was one of the funniest group of guys I’ve ever coached.  Overall the toughness of this team is something that I was really proud of.”