The Martin Middle School boys’ basketball team capped off a perfect season Saturday and left no doubt who the best middle school team in Dallas County is.

The Bulldogs won three games Saturday while playing in the Elmore County Christmas Tournament and finished the season at 12-0. Martin coach Marcus Turner said this is the first undefeated basketball season in school history.

“We wanted to finish the season how we started and that was undefeated and that’s been our goal all year,” said Turner, who was coaching basketball for the first time this year.

Martin started the tournament with a dominant 49-21 win over Marbury, setting up a semifinal game with county rival R.B. Hudson, a team Martin didn’t play this year. Both teams came into the game undefeated.

“My kids had been talking about it, everyone was saying that they wished we had played in the regular season so going into the tournament, we had already got the bracket and we were looking ahead,” Turner said. “We didn’t want to discredit the team that we played first, but we were already looking ahead as if we would get a chance to play R.B. Hudson.”

Carlton Underwood scored 18 points in that game to lead Martin to a 50-43 win. Chance Lee had 15 points, part of 48 points he scored in the three-game tournament.

“We didn’t let them get used to one thing we were doing,” Turner said. “We pretty much switched backward and forward between our press and just playing a zone defense, so we never let those guys adjust to what we were doing on defense.”

Although that win didn’t clinch the tournament, it was probably the biggest win of the year for Martin.

“That’s all my kids were talking about, that we had all the bragging rights in the county,” Turner said. “We had beaten every team in the county. R.B. Hudson was the only one we hadn’t played and everybody else in the county, we had beat them. They were satisfied with that win I believe.”

R. B. Hudson was without a couple of its players for Saturday’s game, but coach Derrick Randolph said the team isn’t making any excuses.

“A lot of kids on both sides know each other, are good friends with each other,” Randolph said.

“They were just excited about getting the chance to finally play each other. It’s a shame that we don’t play each other in the regular season. Hopefully we can change that so we can keep a little rivalry going on.”

Turner said since this is his first year coaching Martin, the schedule was already done when he took over. He also would like to see R.B. Hudson back on the schedule.

“That’s something I plan on trying to change in the future,” Turner said.

R.B. Hudson (11-1) still has one more game against Demopolis Jan. 5, but Martin played its final game Saturday. After topping R.B. Hudson, a lot of teams wouldn’t bring the same amount of energy to the next game. That wasn’t the case for Martin, which overwhelmed Wetumpka for a 45-36 win in the championship game.

“I’m very proud of this team. I’ve talked to them all year about winning a couple of games and to keep it going,” Turner said.

The Bulldogs were a mix of five seventh graders and five eighth graders and they weren’t rattled, even when they played on the road. Turner said he knew he had a good team when Martin went to Orrville and defeated Keith, who he said was undefeated at the time.

“We ended up beating Keith pretty convincingly that game and that’s when I knew we had something special going on,” Turner said.

Turner will enter year two of his coaching career with an unblemished record.

No matter what happens moving forward, he knows he’ll have a hard time topping his first year coaching.

“I told the parents and fans after that game that this may never happen again,” Turner said with a laugh.