When he took the head coaching job at Mt. Zion Prep (Md.) last spring, Lafayette Dublin found himself working with a blank slate.

Dublin had brought two players with him from Rock Creek Christian (Md.) — 2025 guard Jerome Williams Jr. and 2025 forward Kamryn Wylie — and had just one holdover from the previous Mt. Zion squad in Siena-bound 2025 forward Francis Folefac.

From that trio, Dublin set about assembling a program he thought could compete at a national level. Less than a year later, Dublin has done just that, turning the Warriors into a program that has proven adept at knocking off heavyweights.

The latest example came in the Warriors’ 62-57 win over #18 Sunrise Christian (KS) in the Heartland Hoops Classic in Nebraska on February 15. The victory was Mt. Zion’s third of the season against a nationally ranked opponent.“It’s like trying to build an engine from scratch,” Dublin said with a laugh recently. “We’ve been able to do a lot quickly — we had no choice — and they’ve had to adapt on the fly. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we’re still working and grinding and trying to figure stuff out. I think the biggest thing is trying to get the chemistry together and the cohesiveness outside of basketball. You bring 10 new guys together and you’re trying to figure it out, and it's trial and error, but it's not where you start, obviously, it's where you finish.”

As the season begins to wind down, the Warriors — who are playing an independent schedule — are hoping their resume and a strong run in the upcoming Maryland Private School State Tournament can earn them an invitation to a national postseason event. Their record currently sits at 19-5 on the season.

The Warriors have spent much of the season ranked in ESPN’s SCNext Top 25 rankings, dropping out briefly and returning at #23 in the latest edition following the Sunrise win.

“My goal has always been [Chipotle Nationals in April] — or a national tournament,” Dublin said. “People laugh, they think I’m crazy, but that’s always been my goal and it hasn’t changed. I still feel the DMV has the best basketball in the country, but I set out to do a little more. While I was [an assistant] at Bishop Walsh, I had an opportunity to see what the world looked like, and now the new challenge is, ‘Let’s take on the world.’ It’s one thing to rule your area, and that’s great, too, but the world is much larger than DC, Maryland, and Virginia, so I want to give these guys exposure and experience to do that. So they did that early on and we’re trying to keep doing that.”

The Warriors turned heads immediately this season with November wins over #4 Prolific Prep (Ca.) and #6 Utah Prep.

“It definitely helped everybody buy in and boosted everybody’s confidence,” Williams said, “but we already knew we were built for this level. So it wasn’t really a shock to us — it was a shock to everybody else.”

Said Wylie: “When we walked into the first three games — that three-day gauntlet — we already had in our mind we were going 3-0; nobody could tell us differently. We already knew, and we've just been stacking good days after.”

Among Mt. Zion’s other notable wins this season are Archbishop Carroll (DC), Hargrave Military (Va.), Neumann-Goretti (Pa.), Veritas (Ca.) and Corner Canyon (UT). The Warriors have also hung tough in losses to Boys’ Latin (Md.), Sidwell Friends (DC), Oak Hill (Va.), and a rematch with Prolific.

Dublin said the team’s early success put a target on his group that they have struggled to handle at times.

“I think they knew they were good — I don’t know if any of us knew exactly how good we were,” he said. “It's all relative until you start playing the best of the best, which is what we set out to do. [The early wins] definitely helped with confidence and it definitely helped build rapport; it's just that now you’ve got to go from being good when we’re the hunters and learn how to play when you’re the hunted. I think that’s been the biggest challenge thus far, is just switching your mindset from ‘OK, I want to shock the world,’ to now, maybe you are part of the world, and now you’re somebody else’s Super Bowl. So that mentality has been the hardest thing, and we’re still working on it — how to play from out front instead of playing from behind and trying to catch.”

Already home to an established postgraduate program, Mt. Zion Prep added a high school program in 2021. They were immediately competitive and captured the 2023 Maryland Private School title under former coach Quinton Dulic, who is now a college assistant coach at Stevenson (Md.).

Folefac is the lone remaining player from that team, meaning Dublin needed to assemble a squad from the ground up. Williams and Wylie — who came over following Rock Creek’s decision to only serve K-8 students — were the first additions.

“It was easy,” Folefac said of his integrating his former opponents turned teammates. “I feel like it was easier just knowing their skill set off rip; it was easy to incorporate them into how I play, and just being a team player with these guys.”

The Warriors picked up 2026 guard and Maryland native Quron Elliot from AZ Compass Prep, 2026 guard Angel Long (Gaithersburg), 2025 guard Donovan Peterson (West Nottingham), and 2026 guard Sol Vita from South Lakes (Va.). From outside the DMV, Dublin added 2026 guard Jaiden Shipley from Executive Education (Pa.) and 6-foot-10 2027 center Diego Lozano from the Canary Islands.

“Obviously we don’t have a local team,” Dublin said. “There’s so many powerhouses right here at home that it's actually easier to recruit outside of home with the WCAC and a lot of guys doing the same leagues and same things that we’re doing. It just makes it difficult, so sometimes it's better to just go out of town. We’ve just been fortunate enough through relationships to just get some kids that buy in and want the same type of thing.”

The players said it didn’t take long to become a cohesive unit.

“We instantly clicked because we knew how each other played,” Wylie said. “So we knew we could play off each other and we knew it wasn’t going to be a clash; it was going to be more like a gathering for something bigger, and that’s what we did. We dialed in for something bigger early in the year, and we’re continuing to get to it, for real.”

Dublin and his players said Mt. Zion’s unique setup — the Warriors’ postgrad, national, and regional teams all live on campus — has helped foster camaraderie amongst the programs. (The regional team participates in the Metro Private School Conference.)

“You get to a new place where you meet new people and then you get close with them,” Williams said. “So throughout the dorm we’re cool with everybody, you know? We all go to the same school, so it's kind of like us being together kind of forced us to create a bond, and that just helped us on and off the court, too, so everything's run smoothly.”

Now, the Warriors are set on extending their season into the spring.

“We created our goals at the beginning of the year and everybody was dialed in,” Williams said. “So we’re just working together and trying to get things done.”