When Kobe Johns and Amaure Jefferson stepped on the hardwood Friday night, it marked the last regular season game of their South Mountain careers. The duo went out with a bang.

    The Jaguars cruised past the Metro Tech Knights in a 71-30 blowout. Because it was the final regular season game of the year, it was also senior night for South Mountain.

    Though Johns and Jefferson are South Mountain’s only seniors, they haven’t been on the team  long. An Arcadia High School transfer, Johns was forced to sit out the first nine games of the season. Jefferson, however, attended South Mountain the previous three years but joined the team as a senior.

    Neither of the seniors played significant minutes throughout the season but were both in the starting lineup Friday. The two combined for six points.

    While the seniors were  new to the team this season,  coach Jeremy Soria said they were impactful in their leadership.

    “They just came in and kinda gave us a boost from an energy standpoint,” Soria said. They don’t care about their minutes; they care more about the success of the team.”

    Soria wasn’t alone in his praise of the seniors. Sophomore guard and team captain Zay Freeney said Johns and Jefferson helped his development.

    “Us young guards, they make sure that we’re staying focused, and that really helped us throughout the year,” Freeney said. “They kept us level-headed throughout the year.”

    Freeney was second in scoring with 11 points, just one shy of Deotis Nunn Jr. — who had 12. Overall, it was a widespread offensive effort, and 10 of the 11 Jaguars in uniform scored.

    Out of the gates, South Mountain couldn’t be stopped.

    In the first quarter, the Jaguars held a 21-5 lead. As the game progressed, that gap only widened.

    For the majority of the game, South Mountain exercised a full-court press. It was something the Jaguars had worked on in practice, and according to Soria, it was executed well.

    “It was good pressure,” Soria said. “They were getting to the spots we’ve been training them to get to, so I was really happy with the effort.”

    In the fourth quarter, the game switched to a running clock, foreshadowing the obvious — a South Mountain win. Metro Tech entered the game No. 43 in the Arizona 5A rankings and 0-14 on the season. In spite of the Knights struggles, Jefferson said the landslide victory is important for the team going forward.

    “This was kind of a warm-up game,” Jefferson said. “We’re going to get better from it, and it helped us with things we need to work on.”

    Now, the Jaguars are 11-4 in conference play and No. 17 in the 5A rankings. Though South Mountain has won seven of its last eight games, Soria acknowledged a lingering issue for his squad: toughness.

    “At times, we tend to lack toughness and energy,” Soria said. “When we play with energy, it’s hard for anybody to beat us.

    “But there are games where we come out lackadaisical and don’t put forth a full effort.”

    With three games remaining — road tests against Sierra Linda, Carl Hayden and Central — South Mountain’s playoff fate is uncertain. If things go wrong, the Jaguars could miss postseason.

    “We got a pretty hard three games coming up,” Freeney said. “If we lose one of them, we could be out of the playoffs. We have to stay motivated.”