Ponte Vedra boys basketball team rolls into state championship game

The Ponte Vedra boys basketball team is back in the state championship game.

The Sharks trailed after the first basket of the game and took the lead for good not long after that in a 63-41 romp over Apopka Wekiva in the Class 6A state semifinals on Thursday night at the RP Funding Center in Lakeland. Ponte Vedra (23-6) will face Palm Beach Gardens Dwyer (28-1) in the state title game on Saturday at 5:30 p.m.

Ponte Vedra will try and become the first team in the core News4JAX coverage region (Clay, Duval, Nassau, Putnam and St. Johns) to win a boys basketball championship since 2016. Teams from those counties have gone 0-11 following Bolles’ 46-39 win over Holy Trinity in the Class 4A title game that year.

Providence (2017), Creekside (2018), Impact Christian (2018, 2020, ‘21), NFEI (2019), Jackson (2019, 2020, ‘22), Hilliard (2020) as well as the Sharks (2022) have all come up short in championship games since then.

After trailing 2-0, Sam Ritchie and Israel Nuhu combined to score the next 10 points and it was off to the races for Ponte Vedra. Ritchie would close out the half with a basket that put the Sharks up by 19. The lead would swell to as many as 30 in the second half.

It marks the second consecutive season that the Sharks have reached the championship. Ponte Vedra lost in its first state title game last year, a 53-49 loss to Stuart Martin County. Kevin Whirity stepped down after that seasons and three years leading the Sharks program. In his place, the school promoted Ben Wilson and he kept things running smoothly.

Nathan Bunkosky and Israel Nuhu were the Nos. 4 and 5 players on the team in scoring last year. Ben Ritchie and Sam Ritchie combined to average 5.6 points per game last year. This year, Nuhu, Ben Ritchie, Sam Ritchie and Bunkosky are 1-4 in scoring on the Sharks and have blossomed into a wildly successful core under Wilson.

Wilson said it took some time for the Sharks to forget about what they accomplished into 2022 and focus on the present. But when Ponte Vedra found its stride during the season, the Sharks never backed off.