Editor’s note: This is the second in a series looking back on great teams from Athens and Limestone County. The 2015 West Limestone Wildcats won the Class 4A boys basketball state championship, the first time the Wildcats had won the state title in 59 years.

If there is one player West Limestone boys basketball coach Justin Taylor credits for the Wildcats’ Class 4A state championship in 2015, it’s David Hinds.

But it wasn’t what Hinds did in the games that pushed his team to the state title. It was what he did in practice.

Hinds was a three-year starter at point guard but tore his ACL in the 2015 Limestone County Tournament, leaving him unable to play the last month of his senior season.

“There’s no way you can win a state championship when you lose your point guard in January, right?” Taylor said. “But he won us a state championship without even playing the last part of the season.”

How did he do that? By going hard against backup point guard Matthew Bozeman in practice every day, Taylor said. Bozeman was a scrawny sophomore not expecting to log major minutes down the stretch, but he was unexpectedly thrust into the starting lineup after Hinds was injured.

Taylor said Bozeman was ready for that spotlight due to the way Hinds played against him in practice.

“(Bozeman) was a good player and a hard worker, but he was only 5-foot-5 and 120 pounds,” Taylor said. “The only reason he was ready at that point was because David had never taken a play off against him in practice the last two years. Every minute of every drill, David gave him everything he had, so Matt had to get better. And Matt played great once he got put in the starting lineup.”

Zane Griffin, a senior guard on that team, said Hinds was probably the Wildcats’ best defensive player, and the players had to really come together after he was hurt.

“When he tore his ACL, all of us were thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, we put in all that work and now he’s going to get injured, that’s it,’” Griffin said. “But I give a lot of credit to the seniors and the underclassmen really stepped up as well. Matthew Bozeman started at point guard for David, and he had a lot of big games during our postseason run.”

Hinds’ injury was just the first roadblock for West Limestone that season. After rolling to a 28-3 regular-season record, including county and area championships, the Wildcats had to play Class 4A No. 1 team Cordova in the subregional round after Cordova was upset in the final of its area tournament.

West got behind 18-5 early in the game but fought back to take a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter. Cordova came back and led by three points in the final seconds, but Griffin Baugher hit a 3-pointer to tie the game and send it to overtime. West wound up winning 63-62 to advance to the Northwest Regional tournament.

That season was West Limestone’s sixth consecutive year to advance to the Northwest Regional, but the Wildcats had never advanced to the state tourney. The 2015 team finally broke through that glass ceiling by defeating Central-Florence and East Lawrence to advance to the state tournament in Birmingham.

A tense state tourney semifinal against Bibb County ended with a 31-29 victory for the Wildcats and a chance to play for their first state championship since 1956.

“Bibb County had this big 6-foot-8 guy, and you just could not score on them,” Taylor said. “Somebody asked me about our strategy of slowing the ball down in that game, and I said no, we weren’t trying to slow the game down. We were trying to score; we just couldn’t. Fortunately for us, we played really good defense, and they couldn’t score much on us either.”

The state championship game was against Westminster Christian, a team West Limestone had faced twice in the regular season, winning one and losing one.

The game began much like the Cordova game, with West getting down early. Westminster led 8-2 with 3:01 remaining in the first quarter. However, the Wildcats’ defense held Westminster scoreless for the next 10 1/2 minutes. They took a double-digit lead to halftime, then cruised to a 53-42 victory despite four starters fouling out.

“I was putting kids in the game in the first half that hadn’t played since December,” Taylor said. “I was having to ask kids their names as I was sticking them in the game. But they were ready to play because the seniors on that team, their approach to practice every day was you got better by playing against them. They were going to kick your butt in every drill and every practice. I just loved practice. I would’ve practiced all the time with that team because they were so much fun.”

Taylor said what made that 2015 team so special was that intensity in practice. He said it is a reason that team can be the blueprint of success for West Limestone basketball. The Wildcats nearly won another state championship in 2019, finishing runner-up after falling to Talladega in the championship game.

“Everything that was special about them is stuff that anybody could do, but most people just don’t,” Taylor said. “Everybody can work hard. Everybody can be unselfish and care more about the team than they do themselves. Everybody can approach practice like it matters every day. Everybody can do those things.

“They were special because of the kind of people they were, not because they were overpowering athletes. We don’t have overpowering athletes at West, and I don’t see any coming up as I walk through the elementary school. But everybody can choose to be a hard worker and a high character person.”