With a record of 11-0, the Farmer boys are on their way to another win against Dallas Madison (8-1) Friday night at 8 p.m. The team has moved up to 4th  in the Texas Association of of Basketball Coaches 5A rankings, and are taking on the challenge of playing Madison, ranked 1st in 3A.

“If they were 5A they’d probably be top five in the state,” head coach Gary Collier said. “They’re a tough team. We have to take care of the ball and it should be a really good ball game. It’s an opportunity for both teams to get better.”

Collier said that offensively, Madison has three solid guys that can really score, and a lot of the Trojans’ points are from dunks and 3-pointers.

“They get up and down, they pressure you and get a lot of steals,” Collier said. “We have to try and make it a half-court game meaning that whenever they come down they’ve got to set up some type of offense.”

The Farmers will be having their next home game next year on Jan. 3 against 5th-ranked 5A team Plano West, but Collier said he is happy the way his boys are playing.

“We’re trying to sharpen the things we do best,” Collier said. “Taking care of the ball, setting screens and executing a bit more. I don’t think we do a really good job all the time of executing, so we’re working on sharpening [it].”

Collier said the team’s New Years’ resolution is to play hard and win as many games as they can, and most importantly, make the playoffs.

“All these games, realistically they’re good, but realistically they don’t really count towards anything just yet until after the year when we start district play against Denton Ryan,” Collier said. “Those are the games that really matter and that’s the ones we’re looking forward to.”

Monday’s game against Roosevelt ended in a 69-59 win, but not without cutting it close, or having a few things to improve on or to learn from.

“I think we didn’t take care of the ball as good as we wanted to, and because of that Roosevelt was able to capitalize on our turnovers and score some points,” Collier said. “We were up by one at halftime, and in the fourth quarter we went up more into a zone than a man-to-man and that caused them a lot of problems. Had I known the zone was going to give us a lot of problems, we probably would have jumped into it a little bit earlier.We started to build a lead in the 4th quarter, and [Roosevelt] tried to come back a little bit, but we were able to make some baskets.”

Junior power forward Anthony Davis finished with the most points, a total of 23, followed by senior point guard Diamante Langston with a total of 15.

Even with the winning streak, Collier said that it still has not yet become a negative impact on the team’s mentality.

“I think one thing is that it’s taking us a little longer to get going in the game,” Collier said. “We go in with the mentality that teams are going to lay down for us because we’re 11-0, but actually it’s the reverse. Teams are playing harder and because of that, we have to come out more aggressive and with more enthusiasm and more ready to play than the other team.”