COLUMN: Southwest’s story started with heartbreak

If you wanted to tell the story of the Southwest Patriots team that finds itself in the state championship game once more this Friday, it feels like there are dozens of questions that need to be asked.

Like how, for example, they accumulated their oodles of talent. The team is led by scorers like Chase Dupree and CJ Howard, a duo that has become a staple of Southwest’s smoothness and shooting, but also anchored by steady contributor Jonathan Hurley, longtime morale man Montese Green and Westside transfer Alex Butts.

One also might wonder how head coach Monquencio Hardnett coached this group up year after year, going from 11-16 in his second season to last year’s monolithic 27-3 finish and this season’s 29-6 campaign. That question would open the door, though, to others — ones about this year’s six losses, last year’s third and final loss and how the Patriots are going to approach Friday’s title game differently.

These are all important quandaries when it comes to Southwest. They pale in comparison, though, to a single question that is difficult to answer: where to begin?

The endings of stories are often the top priority, making or breaking the entire narrative — like a fine sheet of glass in its final stages of creation, there is either a finish with a brilliant sheen or an irreparable shattering. A movie with a good twist at its peak is lauded, but an ending unearned is justifiably maligned.

But beginnings are just as important. They set the stage for everything, giving us context and introducing us to key figures who will shape the story to come.

In telling Southwest’s story, then, it is tempting to hop in a time machine to 1989 and begin there.

That is when the Patriots last stood atop the state of Georgia and its basketball hierarchy, when Southwest won its sixth and most recent state championship. Chase Dupree’s father and outgoing Southwest athletic director Joe Dupree Jr. was on the team. So were future NBA players like Sharone Wright. Legendary head coach Duck Richardson was still at the helm.

That ‘89 team was the last brick laid in a sturdy Southwest hoops legacy, an informative chunk of lore that Coach Hardnett and all his players nowadays are well aware of. The trophies won by earlier Patriots teams are crucial pieces of the team’s image, too, including the “national championship” honor touted by the 1979 Southwest team.

Or maybe the story begins in 1996, when a young Monquencio Hardnett transferred from Middle Georgia State — though at the time it was Middle Georgia College, a small but mighty JUCO program — to the University of Connecticut. 

For two seasons, Hardnett played with some of the greatest college players the country had to offer as athletes like Rip Hamilton, Khalid El-Amin and others led the UConn Huskies to great heights. He won a Big East championship under the tutelage of all-time great NCAA coach Jim Calhoun and reached the Elite 8 of the NCAA Tournament. 

Perhaps the man now sometimes called “Coach Q” learned how to be a championship-caliber leader up north. Hardnett’s time as a Huskie seems to have shaped him, and he’s said as much. The NCAA tournament run, too, might have prepared Southwest’s head coach for the GHSA state tournament — it’s not quite as intense as March Madness, but high school basketball’s February iteration of basketball battle royale is a gauntlet nonetheless.

These are not the right starting points, however. These vignettes of the past are important, but they don’t make the tale. You need only go back to last year’s championship game — Southwest’s first trip to the Macon Coliseum in decades — to find the beginning.

The Macon Coliseum is where dreams come true and champions are crowned, but it is also where hearts are broken. 

A sold-out crowd — yes, sold-out; in fact, Macon fire marshals had to close the arena’s doors after Southwest fans crowded the venue and overflowed into the aisles — watched the Patriots take a double-digit lead into the fourth quarter. History was in their grasp. The trophy was theirs to lose.

And then the Patriots lost it. 

That solid lead evaporated, and B.E.S.T. Academy came back and defeated Southwest in the title game. The dream was shattered. The packed house sat crestfallen while Hardnett hugged his players, tears rolling down their faces.

That is where this all began. As Chase Dupree and CJ Howard and the rest of the team hit their lowest point, something changed.

Right from the start of this 2025-26 season, they’ve talked about it. At media day before the campaign tipped off, Dupree talked about how hard he took the loss. Howard was eerily silent at the event but clearly laser-focused on the coming season.

Now, looking back from the other side of the 35-game chasm that this season has been, it’s clear the Patriots needed that loss.

Hardnett espoused the belief that his team has benefited greatly from the experience. This roster now has championship history, and they want to finish the job, the head coach said. They further boosted their resume with games against the best of the best after facing Florida prep teams earlier this year, often losing unceremoniously but learning a lot along the way. 

But last year’s championship loss is what forged this team’s mentality. That’s where this all began. Now it’s time for the finale.

Southwest will write the final chapter of this story at 3 p.m. on Friday. They will, funnily enough, face a Rabun County team that has never appeared in a championship game in school history.

“We have the opportunity now to start talking about redemption from last year. I wouldn’t let ‘em use that word until we actually got there,” Hardnett said after Southwest won its semifinal game against Vidalia. “Now that we’re past this game, we can start talking about it.”

A win would be cathartic, perhaps even more so than a win last year might have been. A loss would be a gut punch, a sliced throat, the despicable unhappy ending. Even if the Patriots were to regroup next season under Hardnett and win, make no mistake: this current story, the one with Dupree and Howard and so many others as key players, would end. That group graduates this year. 

This is their last shot. This is a redemption arc, and Macon will certainly pack the house to witness its conclusion. Fans can only hope it’s a storybook ending.