FLOWOOD — Heritage Academy got the spark they needed and now they are back-to-back state champions.
Behind the second half play of Chris Willis and Xzavier Webber the Patriots got past rival Starkville Academy 61-50 to claim the MAIS Class 4A Division III state championship at Jackson Prep on Thursday night.
It’s Heritage Academy’s (14-7) fifth state title overall. With the win the Patriots punched their ticket to the MAIS Overall Tournament at Mississippi College next week.
“Our guys fought through adversity. We haven’t been down at half much this year, but really proud of how they played in the second half and settled down,” said Heritage Academy coach Andrew Howell. “We brought more pressure defensively in the second half and it worked out for us.”
Starkville Academy couldn’t have asked for a better start as the Volunteers jumped out to a 9-0 lead to begin the game and held a 13-6 lead at the end of the first quarter.
To begin the second quarter Starkville went on a 8-4 run to extend their lead out to 21-10, but Heritage began creeping back as the Patriots ended the first half on a 10-4 run to cut the Volunteers lead to 25-20 at halftime.
The third quarter was the difference as Heritage opened the quarter on a 10-0 run to take a 30-25 lead and outscored Starkville 24-13 in the frame to take a 44-38 lead. Willis scored 10 of his 17 points in the quarter
“(The) first four minutes of the third quarter is always huge for us and sets the tone for the rest of the game, so to go on that run to come out of halftime was huge,” Howell said. “First off I have to give credit to Starkville for doing a great job for scheming it up and those guys played so hard and had a great plan. When you lose to a team three times by 30 points it’s easy to show up and go through the motions. Xzavier and Chris are our leaders and they were huge for us in the second half, so couldn’t be more of this group. Now we’re onto (the) overall (tournament) and we want to win the whole thing.”
Webber, an Austin Peay football signee, finished with a game-high 21 points to lead Heritage.
“In the second half we weathered the storm, so we’ve fought adversity before so we just fought it again and played through it and came back and won,” Webber said. “Me and Chris, we’ve built chemistry through the whole season and we’re going to be there for each other, so in the second half we knew we had to step up. Feels good to win, but we’re one step closer. We want to win overall, so this was the one step to get over to get to overall and now looking forward to next week.”
Gibson Nickels had 15 points to lead Starkville Academy, while Sil Santucci added 12 points for the Volunteers (13-12).
“We challenged the guys about playing our rivals for a state championship and they answered with some wrinkles we did defensively, we just couldn’t find quite enough offense to hang around. We played great in the first quarter and it kind of got away from us at the end of the second quarter and the start of the third quarter with their pressure,” said Starkville Academy coach Mark Alexander. “We got rattled a little bit and started turning the ball over, but I couldn’t be more proud of the way we played. Even though we lost, that was one of the better games we played all year. We showed that when we show up to play we can play with anyone, so I’m proud of this group and their play tonight.”
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