The Calloway County Lakers basketball team has been on a rampage this season, finishing the regular season with a 28-3 overall record and a 12-2 record against district opponents.

They added another impressive win onto their resume on Thursday, Feb. 27, when they defeated the Marshall County Marshals 67-56 in the 4th District Tournament championship game.

Calloway finished with the best record they have had since the 2014-15 season where they finished first in Region 1 with a record of 30-4.

One of the biggest factors in the success of the team was the performance of their star player, Jonah Butler. The 6-5 guard averaged 22.5 points and just under 10 rebounds per game on his way to being named the 1st Region Player of the Year by the Kentucky Association of Basketball Coaches.

He has been able to do a bit of everything for the Lakers and Assistant Coach Jackson Chapman thinks that Butler deserves more recognition than he has already gotten this season due to all of the things that he is able to do on the court.

“I’m telling you right now, if he wasn’t from Murray, Kentucky, that kid would be a four or five-star recruit,” Chapman said. “He is a great shooter, great passer, he handles the ball well, defends his butt off, he’s super athletic, and he has a crazy IQ. The kid can literally do it all.”

Butler has been with the team since his freshman year, where he averaged 9.3 points. But as the years have gone on, his scoring prowess has continued to increase as he averaged 12 points as a sophomore and 17 points as a junior. But this year with his 22.5 points per game, he has really taken the next step. Both of Jonah’s older brothers, Cade and Isaiah, also played for Calloway, and Chapman believes that the youngest has solidified himself as the best in the family.

“I saw him when he was a little three-year-old when he moved to Calloway,” Chapman said. “I played with his brothers and I thought there was no way that the youngest Butler would be the best one. But I hate to break it to Cade and Isaiah, he is the best. He’s an electric player, man.”

But it’s not just Jonah who is making an impact as the rest of the Calloway starting lineup has also been performing well. The Lakers had three players named to the All-District team, including Butler, star point guard Eli Finley and spark plug Conner Lockhart.

“When you’ve got guys like Jonah Butler, Eli Finley, and Conner Lockhart, offense is going to come naturally to those boys,” Chapman said.

Calloway will be in action against the Vikings of St. Mary in the first round of the Boy’s Region 1 tournament. They will play at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 6., and Chapman gave a bit of an insight into the team’s desire to replicate some of their great performances on the defensive side of the court.

“The intensity defensively that we had in the 2A State Championship, we had it the first time we played Marshall, and we had it tonight,” Chapman said. “When we lock in on the defensive end, it’s a whole different ball game.”

The Laker’s average scoring margin this season has been just over 10 points per game at 11.3, and this comes as a result of great play on both ends, not just the offensive side of the ball. They have two guys in the top 40 in points per game in  Kentucky with Finley and Butler, so the offense will come. If they are able to perform just as good on the defensive end, Calloway becomes a much harder team to beat than they already are.