As soon as Raysean Johnson knocked down a 3-pointer early in the second quarter, it became a special night for the Valley Central boys’ basketball team.

It became doubly special at the end of the night.
Johnson became the Vikings’ first 1,000-point scorer early in the game, and then his team clinched the Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association Division II championship on Wednesday night with a 59-43 win over the Warwick Wildcats at Warwick Valley High School.

Johnson is the first Valley Central player to eclipse 1,000 points since Billy McClaren in the early 1980s. He is the third Valley Central player to eclipse 1,000 points since the district was established in 1958 by the merger of the Montgomery, Maybrook and Walden school districts. One player scored 1,000 points for Walden High School.

“This feels great,” said Johnson. “I missed a year so I had basically three years to get 1,000, and it felt really great. I just had to work really hard.”

And efficiently, as he didn’t even have three full seasons. He averaged 16 points per game as a freshman in 2019-20, but the COVID-19 pandemic season of 2020-21 was only 10 games long. Then he missed his junior year (2021-22) with a shoulder injury before returning for his senior season.

Even as a freshman, he felt as though 1,000 points was an attainable goal.

“I knew I just had to work hard for it,” Johnson said. “I had to want it more than everybody else.”

He came into the night needing seven points to reach the milestone. His basket, the seventh of his 17 points, gave the Vikings an 11-10 lead over the Wildcats.

“It was a great moment because I’ve been here since he was a freshmen, and we’ve played together a long time,” said Jerrell Taylor, who led the Vikings with a game-high 22 points. “He’s my best friend and it felt really good having Raysean on the floor.”

The more important part of the night was beating the Wildcats, who entered the game having lost three straights, and the Vikings need a win to get the division title, their first since 2015.

“I’ve been associated with Valley Central basketball now for more than half of my life and I’ve never – as a head coach or a player – been able to put anything up on the wall,” Valley Central coach Frank Nutt said. “Now we’re able to, and to me, when you look up there and you see five or six dates up there, and the program’s been around since the 60s, you know any time you can add something, it’s super special.”

The Vikings led by two points at the end of the first half and then by five at the end of the third quarter.

But with the Vikings leading by four points, Taylor converted a three-point play , starting a 8-0 run that gave the Vikings a 12-point lead. From there, the Wildcats never pulled closer than nine points.

The Vikings finished the week with home games against the Middletown Middies and the Red Hook Raiders, and then will wait for Thursday’s seeding meeting to see where they land in the upcoming Section 9 Class AA tournament.

“I feel good, but we’re not satisfied,” Taylor said. “We just want to keep going.”