PALM BEACH GARDENS — Dwyer High boys basketball coach Fred Ross noticed something different about his team from the opening tip.

"The kids were finally excited to play," he said. "During the regular season, sometimes we were winning but winning ugly, and not really earning it."

But it's playoff time now, and the Panthers know the time for complacency is over.

Dwyer scored the first 12 points of the game, six by senior forward Jaelen Nelson, and never looked back in routing Miami Southridge 72-49 in a Region 4-6A quarterfinal game Thursday night. The third-seeded Panthers (22-3) will face second-seeded St. Thomas Aquinas (20-6) in a semifinal game Tuesday night in Fort Lauderdale.

Since suffering back-to-back losses to Palm Beach Lakes and Jupiter in mid-January, the Panthers have won eight consecutive games as they attempt to repeat as Class 6A state champions.

Dwyer's in-your-face defense limited Southridge to one field goal in the first quarter, and that came with 36 seconds left. The Panthers then went on a 13-2 run early in the second quarter, highlighted by 3-pointers from Nelson and sophomore guard Tamari Reed, to make it 28-9 and effectively take all drama out of the game.

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"That's two games in a row where we got off to a really good start with our pressure and things just clicked for us," Ross said, referencing the district final against Pompano Beach-Blanche Ely last week. "(Southridge) is a really good team, but we were home, we were fresh, and we had some good workouts this week.

"Our nonstarters did a really good job of preparing the starters for how we wanted to play. The kids just came out and, thank God, executed the game plan."

Dwyer's share-the-ball approach showed up in the final box score. Senior wing Amari Nealy scored a game-high 18 points, Nelson finished with 17, senior guard Bobby Gilbert III scored 14 and Reed had 12.

Nelson said it was important for the Panthers to make an early statement against the Spartans, who arrived about an hour before tip-off after a 2½-hour bus ride.

"They have to meet our tempo," Nelson said. "We set the tone for the whole game, especially defensively. As long as we can guard, we'll be fine, because we know we're going to get them out of their sets and get them to speed up.

"They're coming up here to lose. This is our den, this is our home. You can't come into our home and run us over. We take pride in that."

Dwyer had a bit of a lapse late in the third quarter and early in the fourth, allowing Southridge to go on a 13-2 run and cut the deficit to 15. "We kind of went away from the total game plan," Ross said. "But we took a timeout and they got back focused."

From there, Nealy took control. Voted the outstanding player in last year's Class 6A final four, Nealy was relatively quiet through three quarters, but he scored 13 points in the fourth.

"I realized that I was playing bad and I knew my teammates needed me, so I had to step up and just play hard," he said.

Ross is looking to Nealy, Nelson and the other seniors to provide leadership during this playoff run.

"They all played a lot of minutes last year," Ross said. "They know what it takes. ... You don't get a repeat in high school a lot, so they're motivated to try to do what they can. They believe in this system."

Southridge coach Robert Doctor is in a unique position to evaluate Dwyer's chances of a repeat. He faced the Panthers in the regional semifinals last year, losing 75-66.

Doctor said his team wasn't prepared for the Panthers' early blitz Thursday night — "the pressure, the trapping, the man-to-man."

"I think we were a little bit nervous at the beginning," he said. "We came in thinking we needed to withstand the first quarter and then move on from there, but we dug a hole for ourselves."

Asked to compare the two Dwyer teams, Doctor said he'd give the edge to the 2023 Panthers. "But this year they're good, they play the same aggressive style, they've got guys that can shoot it," he said, "so I think they've got a chance of winning it." 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Dwyer boys basketball off and running in state championship defense