Deerfield’s Brown and Sagemont’s Roe are Broward Boys’ Basketball Coaches of the Year

Sagemont coach David Roe entered the season having to adjust to the loss of one key player to graduation before dealing with the loss of another to injury after only 10 games.

And still, he was able to steer the Lions to their first state title in nearly a decade.

And at Deerfield Beach, Kenny Brown’s squad was one of the winningest teams in Broward County in a year of parity, and defied the odds to reach the school’s first regional final in five seasons.

Those accomplishments earned Roe and Brown the Miami Herald’s Boys’ Basketball Coach of the Year awards for the 2022-23 season.

Brown is the winner for Classes 7A-5A after guiding the Bucks to two regional playoff wins for the first time since 2018 and a 24-5 record.

A year after Deerfield Beach didn’t even advance past the district playoffs, the Bucks won their district championship beating Stoneman Douglas in the final. Deerfield then won a rematch less than a week later in the regional quarterfinals.

Then came the Bucks’ highlight of the season when they traveled south to Miami and knocked off Miami Palmetto, a team that a week earlier had upset top 10 nationally-ranked Columbus in its district.

Led by its senior guards Jakwon and Jason Morris, Deerfield Beach shut down a potent Palmetto squad on its way to an eye-opening 64-55 win.

“We just talked about getting two, three, four, five stops in a row, get out to a lead and put some pressure on them,” Brown said after the win over Palmetto.

Although the Bucks fell to Columbus in the regional final, a foundation may have been set for future success.

At Sagemont, Roe will need to do some reloading with the Lions losing several key contributors from a team that won its first state championship since 2014 and third overall.

Roe watched the Lions start the season 9-0 before suffering what could have been a crippling setback when starting point guard Cameron Gibson went down with a season-ending injury.

But Sagemont morphed itself over the next few weeks into a team that used its size to dominate in the paint and become more efficient defensively with a squad of talented defensive players.

“They took a punch but didn’t fall apart,” Roe said during the season. “These boys found solutions tonight at the end for a lot of things that could have not gone our way and not let that faze them. They found a way to bring it home.”