It’s nearly impossible to accurately predict the athletic future of seventh-graders.

But for the Moss Middle School seventh-grade basketball team, the present can be described in one word: perfection.

The seventh-grade Dragons were honored at Moss Middle School on Friday after completing a perfect 31-0 season and winning the Kentucky Basketball Academy Seventh Grade State Tournament last week in Lexington.

“It’s a great accomplishment in the fact that it’s hard to get yourself mentally prepared to play basketball like that every night and they just did a great job of that every time,” coach Jason Lemily said. “Physically they had talent – there was never a question about that – but the challenge really was to get themselves ready to play every time.

“The future is tough to predict, but as long as they stay together, then another state championship is in their future.”

After going 25-0 and winning the Southern Kentucky Middle School Conference championship during the regular season, Moss was invited to compete in the KBA tournament in Lexington. From there, the Dragons won six games in two days – beating St. Joseph’s, Louisville Crosby, Wayne County, Clinton County and Johnson County.

Earning tournament Most Valuable Player honors for the Dragons was Jacob Hill, who averaged nine points a game and led the team in both assists and steals. Other standouts were Chris Porter, who led the team with 12 points a game; Scooter Winn, the team’s leading rebounder; and Wayne Baird, a seven-point-a-game scorer.

Other team members are Robert Edwards, Rondell Green, Trent Huston, Nikola Jokic, Demarcus Potter, Tre Rigsby and Aron Strange.

Lemily said one of the key components of the championship run was the closeness the team, explaining that everyone’s mission was to play hard for one another.

“There was no animosity on this team,” Lemily said. “During the state championship run, what I enjoyed so much was that during those six games, if one of seven or eight guys didn’t play the game he did then we would’ve went home.

“We talked a lot about history throughout the season and set personal and team goals, and they understood the significance of what they were trying to accomplish. … They looked at this as an opportunity to make some history.”