OXFORD — The Columbus High School girls basketball team knows the nine words by heart.
The Falcons repeated them after last year’s second-round playoff loss at Greenville sank a season they thought would end in the state title game. After star Hannah White moved on to Alabama State. During the offseason preceding what coach Yvonne Hairston expected to be a down year.
Through deficits and injuries, comebacks and cold spells, wins and losses, the mantra that guided the team was never far away: “For every minute, for every second, we keep fighting.”
On Friday, the Falcons’ fight carried them all the way to the MHSAA Class 5A championship. Columbus (23-4) held off Brookhaven (26-4) by a score of 55-51 at The Pavilion at Ole Miss in Oxford, capturing the first state title in girls basketball in school history.
“This goes out to all our girls in the Lady Falcon program who have worked so hard to get here but were not able to accomplish what we’ve accomplished,” Hairston said. “We’re just celebrating all of them and all of us, and it’s just a great feeling.”
Columbus jumped out to a 10-point halftime advantage and watched the Panthers tie the game in the third quarter before taking a narrow lead late in the quarter. Brookhaven repeatedly came within one point of tying the game, but the big shot the Panthers were waiting for never came.
Instead, the Falcons closed out the game at the foul line, given a remarkable 12 free throws in the final 30.7 seconds of the contest. Freshman Shania Givens alone had four pairs of foul shots, and she split all four.
But her final make with just seven seconds to go put Columbus up four points, an insurmountable advantage with the clock winding down.
“‘OK, this game is over,'” Hairston thought to herself from the sideline.
With a second to go, Givens hauled in a missed 3-pointer by Brookhaven star senior Silentianna Collins, and Hairston and the Falcons’ bench poured onto the court in celebration.
For junior point guard DJ Jackson, the final buzzer made her confidence official.
“Even when it got busy, I kept believing, and I knew we had it. I knew we had this game, and I owe that lady,” Jackson said, pointing at a smiling Hairston. “All the times she yelled at me; all the times we ran. If we lost, it was on me. I thank her for that. It’s just gonna better us in the future.”
Jackson scored 17 points, and Givens added 13, but senior Aniya Saddler once again led the Falcons. Saddler, a Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College commit, had 19 points and was named the game’s most valuable player.
“She’s just been playing hard for us all year, and I knew it wasn’t gonna be any exception tonight,” Hairston said.
The senior was effective in the face of the Panthers’ box-and-one defense, one of the many looks Saddler has faced from opposing teams. While she only made 6 of 22 shots from the field, she rebounded and passed effectively to keep the Falcons afloat.
“She kept her head tonight,” Hairston said. “That’s what champions do. She’s a true champion, and she came out and finished strong for us.”
Columbus needed Saddler most in a back-and-forth third quarter where Brookhaven showed off its shooting skill. The Falcons’ 30-20 halftime lead was erased in 3 minutes and 15 seconds in an offensive flurry for the Panthers, and two minutes later, Collins hit a 3-pointer to give Brookhaven the lead.
“It may not have looked like it, but we did have a game plan coming out after halftime,” Hairston said. “It was good that we had a 10-point lead going into halftime, because we needed that cushion.”
Down by three, Columbus responded remarkably well considering the stage and the circumstances. Senior Bri Smith found Jackson near the left corner for a tying 3-pointer, one of her three makes from deep in the game.
“My teammates did a good job of finding me open, and I know I can stick that shot,” Jackson said. “That’s my range.”
But after Columbus went up three points, Collins hit a pair of free throws with two seconds to go in the quarter to cut the lead to one going into the fourth. The Ole Miss commit finished with 22 points, and she was a principal reason why Columbus had to adjust its defense from a 2-3 zone to man-to-man.
And after Columbus stretched its lead to seven points midway through the quarter, Collins hit a key jumper to make it 50-48 in the Falcons’ favor with a minute to go. After Givens split her first two free throws, Collins one-upped her by hitting both with 23 seconds left to make it a one-point game.
“This is what a state championship is supposed to look like: both teams battling,” Hairston said. “Unfortunately, we had to have a loser.”
The Falcons got several key offensive rebounds on their own misses at the line to make sure they wouldn’t be the loser their coach described. With 15 seconds to go, Givens collected her own rebound on a miss, tried a midrange jumper, got that board back and was fouled for the third time in 20 seconds. It wasn’t the last.
She missed her second shot, but Smith grabbed it and handed it back to Givens. She made the second of her fourth and final pair to give Columbus a 55-51 lead.
“When we went up four, we knew they had to take a difficult shot, and we were not going to foul them,” Hairston said.
Instead, Collins hoisted up a tough 3 that was well off the mark, and the Falcons had the championship for which they’d worked all season.
“I know no senior wants to lose like this and go home,” Saddler said. “We worked hard for it. For me to be a senior and walk out with a ring, to make my teammates happy and make my coaches happy, it feels great.”
To Hairston, the resolve Saddler and her teammates showed was one final, lasting example of the motto that propelled the Falcons through the season. Columbus rebounded from a tough early-season schedule, regrouped from a stunning loss to New Hope in the district tournament championship game and held off Holmes County Central and Lafayette in tightly contested playoff games before beating Laurel handily in the state semifinal.
“They fought all year through adverse situations,” Hairston said. “That’s what got us here, and that’s what pulled that thing out tonight for us.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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