COVINGTON, Ga. — Going into the 2021-22 season, there has been one goal for this year’s Newton Rams team: Win the state title. 

Leading the way to making that goal a reality have been four individuals who have been heavily recruited. 

Juniors Stephon Castle, Jakai Newton, Marcus Whitlock and Marquavious Brown have all received offers to play Division I college basketball. Three of them have already committed to colleges. 

Castle is a Connecticut commit, Newton has committed to Indiana and Brown is committed in-state to Georgia. Whitlock currently has three offers from Presbyterian, Grambling State and Alabama-Birmingham, too. 

Head coach Charlemagne Gibbons pointed to the tenacity of the four players as to what makes them a special group. 

“The combination of all of those guys and their spirit is really good,” Gibbons said. “I don’t think you’ll ever come and see these guys not give effort. They may not play great every night, but they always give effort.” 

Castle, Newton and Brown are all starters while Whitlock seems to serve as the team’s sixth man off the bench. 

But, there’s a feeling like no other when all four players take the court at once. 

“We’ve been playing AAU together,” Newton said. “We all got chemistry together and we know how to run the floor and make big plays.” 

Their chemistry and playmaking ability has helped the Rams to a 19-4 overall record which includes a 6-0 record in Region 4-AAAAAAA. 

Newton has also gone out of the state to achieve great success. 

In particular, on Jan. 8, it claimed the 2022 National Prep Sugar Bowl Classic in Louisiana, going 4-0 to win the tournament. 

At the time of this publication, the Rams were ranked No. 2 in Class 7A by numerous outlets. 

Throughout all the success, though, the big four of the Rams recognized that there’s still room for improvement. 

“I think if we can get back defensively like we were earlier in the season, I think we will be fine,” Castle said. “We’re doing all the other stuff, we’re just not defending as well as we were earlier.” 

Even so, each player highlighted areas that they can improve individually to help their team have even better success moving forward. 

All four players stressed the importance of watching film, learning from their mistakes and improving on their rebounding numbers to improve their chances at a state championship. 

In that, however, they stressed how more improved the current team is compared to the team that tipped off the season on Nov. 13, 2021. 

“When we first started playing, we were kind of off a little bit,” Brown said. “But we picked up our game and took it to another level.” 

 While they’ve been contributing on the court, each player admitted that the progress during this season wouldn’t have been possible without their head coach. 

They all said how Gibbons has done a lot for each one’s confidence on and off the court. 

“When I first came, he already knew what I could do,” Whitlock said. “He said that I could just add to the team.” 

Now, they said they aspire to take the confidence from their head coach as well as the lessons they’ve learned during this season to fuel a deep playoff run.

Their regular season finale will be on Wednesday, Feb. 9, at South Gwinnett and the region tournament will be at Newton High School from Feb. 12-17. 

But, for this group of players, their preseason goal has remained top priority, but more so now than ever. 

“[Winning the state title], that’s what we’re doing everything for,” Newton said.