OXFORD — Coltie Young never hesitates.
No matter the distance, no matter the pressure, no matter the stage, the Starkville High School junior won’t even think about whheter to take a shot when his team needs it.
“When it’s in my hand, I’m gonna just let it go,” Young said.
In Saturday night’s MHSAA Class 6A championship game, when Starkville was counting on him most, Young did just that. With Starkville down one point and the Yellow Jackets’ half of The Pavilion at Ole Miss stunned into silence by a rapid Murrah comeback, Young got the ball in his hands midway through the fourth quarter a few feet beyond the 3-point arc just to the left of the top of the key.
Swish.
On the Jackets’ next possession, as Starkville tried to add to a two-point lead, Jailen Jones found Young in the same spot. Same result.
“He stepped up at the right time,” Starkville coach Greg Carter said.
His critical long-distance connections put Starkville up five points, arrested Murrah’s momentum and proved to be enough. Less than five minutes later, Starkville sealed an 58-51 win for its second straight Class 6A championship.
“It never gets old,” Carter said. “Winning never gets old.”
The win put the Jackets’ final record at 27-2 and completed a season with success Carter couldn’t imagine at the outset.
“They had confidence that we could get here, but we knew in November we weren’t ready to play in this,” Carter said.
Stressing defense, toughness and shot selection in practice, Starkville improved throughout the year, though, winning its district and beating Clinton, Olive Branch and Harrison Central in the Class 6A playoffs to reach Saturday’s final in Oxford.
At the start Saturday, the Jackets came out on fire, burying the Mustangs with hot shooting from seniors Trey Jackson and Forte Prater and taking a 21-4 lead after the first quarter. Starkville kept up the momentum to lead 35-23 at halftime.
“We were a couple possessions away from really putting the game away in the first half,” Carter said.
But Murrah wasn’t done. The Jackets seemed powerless to stop a furious Mustangs run that cut a 39-25 lead to 39-38 with 1:42 to go. At the end of the third quarter, Starkville clung to a two-point advantage.
“‘They beat us in the second and the third quarter,'” Carter told his team. “‘All we’ve gotta do is win this one quarter in order to be a state champion.'”
At first, the Jackets seemed like they couldn’t answer the call. Murrah cut the lead to 45-44 then went ahead on a mid-range jumper by Joseph Dupree with 5:49 to go.
Then Young got the ball and got hot from deep, giving Starkville a 56-51 lead with 4:44 left and allowing the Jackets to lock in on defense.
“Once we got that separation,” Carter said, “we got all the stops that we needed.”
Starkville held Murrah to just five points the rest of the way and never led by fewer than four. After Prater was intentionally fouled and hit both free throws to put the Jackets up seven with five seconds left, Murrah missed a jumper, the clock ran out, and Starkville had its second straight state championship — far from an easy feat.
“Last time we were in that position (to go back-to-back), we lost,” Carter said. “It’s really hard to do it. When we started this season, the first thing I told them was, ‘This team hasn’t done anything. This team hasn’t won anything. If you want something, you’ve gotta go win it.'”
On Saturday, Starkville did just that.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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